


Missing

by MoldyMoo



Category: Maximum Ride - James Patterson
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-02-09 19:32:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 29,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12895161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoldyMoo/pseuds/MoldyMoo
Summary: 3 years after STWAOES. Something is wrong. And it's more than just Max being kidnapped, the flock going through hell to get her back, and then moving in with Dr. Martinez. It has something to do with these bird kids from the future and the people hellbent on killing them in the present...





	1. Chapter 1: Prologue

I flipped on the light, revealing the shabby motel beds, and I sighed one more time. I can’t believe I gave in. Again. Who was the leader of this flock? I didn’t know anymore.

Nudge suggested we slept in actual beds, and Gazzy had to help her team up on me and point out every. Single. Hotel that we just happened to fly over. Angel joined in after a while, knowing from my thoughts that they were going to crack me. Fang was absolutely no help. Some second-n-command he was…

No use crying over it now.

Though I couldn’t help but shudder as my eyes swept across the deep red walls, the cream-colored sheets, and the orange-gold glow of the lights. It was all too familiar. Oh yeah. The last time we’d spent the night in a hotel, I’d been kidnapped and—

“Max?” I looked up to see Fang watching me. The littler ones were dividing the two king-sized beds up. I shook my head at him minutely and then decided to intervene on the argument over the beds.

“I don’t wanna sleep next to Iggy,” Gazzy was whining. “He kicks.”

“Girls in one bed, guys in the other,” Iggy retorted.

“Iggy and Gazzy in one bed, Nudge and Angel in the other. Fang can taken the couch, I’ll be in the arm chair on first watch,” I muttered. I felt Fang’s scrutinizing eyes on me until I turned the lights out, not letting anyone argue.

I settled into the lumpy armchair, listening carefully as the whispering around the room quieted and breathing slowed, evening out. Except one.

“Go to sleep,” I whispered as soft as I could, trying not to wake the others. Sure, I had _my_ reasons for not wanting to sleep. Last time we stayed in a hotel, three years ago, I was kidnapped. But Fang had no excuse.

“I can take first watch,” he whispered back. “You need sleep.”

“And I’ll get it,” I argued, “when it’s your turn to watch.”

And then I heard something and I held my breath.

_Ka-chlunk!_

A bullet sliding into a chamber. We didn’t hear it often, but it was definitely a heart-stopping, unmistakable sound. Slowly, I sat up the same time Fang and Iggy did. We shared a long, wordless stare. I moved across the room as fast as I could and tapped the kids’ hands near me and Fang did the same.

But before we could get everyone out of the beds, the walls caved in around us and we were surrounded like never before. They didn’t even pause before they came at us. Smoke from the broken plaster made my eyes water and sting, but I strained through the fog to find a silhouette to swing at that wasn’t one of the Flock.

As it settled, I could see Fang standing over a flyboy with his foot pressed firmly on his back, leaning back to rip the wings out. I took out one of my own, watching as a few surrounded me.

We fought each one off, knowing the Flyboy’s weak points, but there were _way_ too many. It was like a never-ending line. I would destroy one, and another two would show up. I felt like more and more were flooding into the room with us faster than we could take them out.

I heard an explosion that made my ears crackle and I paused for a second, looking for the rest of the flock in the stillness, my ears ringing. Hands wrapped around my arms and legs and I let out a scream as something tore at one of my legs. There was an intense pressure, like someone standing on the back of my calf, and I could hear it snap. A sickening sound that made my stomach lurch as the white-hot pain ripped through my nerves.

And then color exploded behind my eyes and it was dark and silent...


	2. Chapter 2

"Max!" her name was called by the rest of the flock, but Fang couldn't do anything but watch helplessly as they overwhelmed Max. If he left the grouping he was being occupied with, he risked letting Nudge and the Gasman getting overwhelmed. She screamed and he struggled to get over to her, his joints screaming in protest. The Flyboys had him by the torso and arms and he could barely move to hit them. He was distracted enough just watching them take her.

By the time he did get away, they had knocked Max out and were hauling her away.

"Put her down!" he hissed, voice menacing.

"You have nothing for us. We will take the girl," the Flyboy said robotically.

"Like hell you will," he growled back, adrenaline giving him renewed strength to knock out a couple Flyboys, but unfortunately, he was too late. Max was a small dot on the horizon. Pain shot through his body like electricity, his muscles contracting involuntarily, and then he was out like a light.

West. They had taken her west…

-x-

"Fang? Fang!" voices called to him from the darkness, but he chose to ignore them. Max. Max. She was gone. They'd taken her to God knows where. That's was the only thing he could remember. Seeing the limp, unconscious body grow smaller and small in the blackness of the sky.

"Fang!" another called, more sharply, and his body shook under the force of shaking hands.

He opened his eyes and sat up slowly, checking himself for any breaks and mentally cataloguing bruises. His fingers brushed over a knot on the left side of his head and I winced, jostling a few bruised ribs as well.

"Thank God," everyone sighed in relief. He sat back and looked around him, Angel being tended to by Gazzy near his feet, Iggy sitting on the edge of the couch popping a finger back into place, and Nudge rocking on her heels in a crouch to his right.

All was silent for minutes.

"What now?" Angel asked quietly.

He ran a hand through his hair. "We need to find Max," he said simply. It was the only thing he  _could_ do. He wouldn't be able to focus on anything else.

He began to plan it out in his head.

First thing they needed to do was find out where they had taken her. West…

"We know  _that_ much," Iggy grumbled. "Does anyone know where to start?"

"West," Angel murmured, echoing the mantra in my head.

He glanced around at the flock, cataloguing visible injuries. Angel and Nudge were crying, but looked unhurt. Gazzy had a small cut over his right temple and Iggy had a split lip. And then Iggy's dislocated fingers… Not too bad.

Fang stood up and nearly fell back down when he started coughing hard, his body warming. The world had a strange, slight tilt to it for a quick second, but he felt it quickly righting and he shook the feeling away.

"You okay?" Iggy asked, laying a light hand on his arm.

"Yeah, I think I just kicked some dust up in my face or something," he muttered, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. "Let's go."

-x-

My head was pounding and I felt like there was an entire brick building sitting on my chest. I heard muffled voices around me and strained my ears to hear them, but couldn't bring my body to focus on much else. I was tired, so tired, and I tried to will the blackness to take me again.

"What good would putting her in a crate do? She's already broken out of one—she'll break out again," a voice argued over her head. "Learn from history."

"She's too injured to put in a tank right away. Let her heal up some before we put her away."

They seemed to come to an agreement, but my mind clicked with choice words. 'Tank' and 'crate' echoed in my head, alternating, and I wanted to scream. Maybe I did.

I couldn't hear anything and I assumed I was unconscious again, dreaming. I was floating at the edge of the darkness, teetering on the edge.

I woke up again when someone called my name. It sounded familiar. Like a good, happy familiar. I thought it was Fang at first, the voice deep and warm. It had turned deep over the years as we went through puberty. But slowly and torturously, it morphed and changed into a demon's voice.

"Max," Jeb called again softly, stroking my cheek.

I moaned and looked up at him. My head swam and the room shifted around the edges. "What?" I snapped weakly. "I was just having an amazing dream and you weren't in it." I slurred, laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world as I sat up on the gurney they'd had me chained to by the wrist. How lame…

He sighed, unlocking the wrist strap, and motioned for me to follow him out the door. I followed merely out of curiosity of this blatant act of trust he had just bestowed me with. We entered a large basement-like room with four white coats seated around a metal table.

"Oh, are we gonna play games?" I asked. What was  _wrong_ with me? I felt giddy, stupid. Was this what it was like to be high? I was obviously drugged, I thought sluggishly. Someone was gonna die…

"You'll have to excuse her," Jeb muttered. "The sedative drugs haven't worn off yet."

Great, so I  _was_  drugged. I tried to force myself out of it, to focus.

"Now, Maximum," one started saying. Oh, good. So I had a name now? I wasn't experiment-numbers-and-letters anymore? Aw,  _darn_. "We have a few questions for you."

I dropped my head to the table, a headache already forming between my eyes. I picked it up and dropped it again and it felt like it eased the pain, so I did it a few more times.

"Max," Jeb said in a warning tone.

"What are these questions?" I asked, my voice muffled by the cold metal in front of my face. It felt goooooooood.

"Where are the rest of the experiments? The ones you freed?" another asked and I looked up, eyebrows pulling together.

"What are you talking about?" I asked honestly.

"Don't play dumb," a female whitecoat snapped. "The ones in Texas that you let go after killing the entire staff in the building. We know it was you, so don't lie."

"We haven't been anywhere  _near_ Texas," I argued, sobering a little. "You picked me up from somewhere in the north…"

"You blew up the building when you left." Ah, Iggy and Gazzy's trademark the last few years. But again, we hadn't been in Texas at all…

"We didn't do it," I replied honestly. We never  _did_. No joke.

"Yes. You. Did," another argued.

"Where's your proof?" I challenged. "Where's your tapes or recordings or photos or  _anything_?"

No one responded, the four whitecoats began muttering amongst themselves and I dropped my head to the table. I pounded my head a few more times. Oh, Metal Table, no one understands me like  _you_ do.

"I say throw her into the isolation tank now. She's healed."

There were small murmurs of agreement.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. "Healed?"

"You've been sedated for two—almost three weeks now," Jeb clarified softly, trying to put a comforting hand on my shoulder, but I wiggled out of it. "The wounds you sustained from your capture were pretty severe."

"Yes," A male whitecoat to my right stressed. "This is why—since she's apparently refusing to admit anything and tell us where the others are—she should be placed in the sensory deprivation tank for a day or two." He shot me a demeaning look with his creeper mustache and outdated glasses…

"She'll talk then," another nodded.

"We can prep for the next step in the meantime."

"I feel like we're wasting time trying to get information about the Texas Institute," the fourth piped in for the first time, a pristine woman with round glasses and perfectly styled hair. "It changes nothing and it is a waste of resources. Let's just focus on capturing the others. We can't move on with the next step without the two older males, anyways."

"You have a point," the creepy man murmured, scratching his beard in thought.

"But the escaped experiments—"

"Will resurface eventually, or they'll die off as Darwinism takes course. It's the perfect end-game experiment."

"Last chance, Maximum," Jeb muttered to me while the four continued debating my future in front of me. "Where are the experiments that were released? You have got to tell us if you know  _anything_ or you could have just killed us all.  _Including_ the rest of the flock."

"I'll tell you what I know," I said, and the whitecoats perked up, shutting themselves up. "I  _know_ that my flock and I did not do anything that you're accusing me of."

"I'm done here," one of the men growled, pushing his chair back and standing up. Others followed suit.

"You blew it, Max," Jeb whispered, waving someone over. I felt a prick in my arm and things got real quiet and fuzzy, the fear-induced panic that had been running it's course through my veins the last minute or two intensifying. When had they pulled out a needle? And then the room disappeared all together.


	3. Chapter 3

Three weeks, two days, and eight hours. Fang sighed and dropped his arm back down to his side once the night-light on his watched flipped off again, letting it dangle and brush the tree branch he was perched in. He refused to let anyone, especially himself, believe that Max could be dead.

But that didn't stop him from making it a possibility. It'd been too long. They were taking too long to track her down. West, he'd chanted that day, but they'd gone west. They'd gone to the facility in California. And Colorado. And Texas, though that one was still smoldering from…whatever had happened.

That's where they'd decided to stop and breathe. They wanted to wait for the emergency responders to leave, the FBI to abandon it, so they could comb the shell of a building and look for anything that might work. He'd hope Nudge might be able to find something she could work with. That was the current plan, anyways.

He watched the rest of the flock sleep. His mind raced as fast as his bird-kid heart as his mind drifted back to her, like it always did over the last year or so. Always on his mind...

Three weeks. Three whole weeks and they had yet to find her. Sure, there had been many leads and small traces, but nothing big. They had no idea where she was. What would he do if he never saw her again? Max was the glue that kept the flock together, and now that she's gone…they're all slipping. Nudge was quieter, Angel was less enthusiastic, Iggy was wordless, Gazzy was trying to put on a bravado act, and besides the pounding headache that sometimes left him spacey, he  _tried_ to step up and be the leader.

He'd never been the best leader of the flock, but a slight democracy had been working out, he thought. Working as a team to get their fearless leader back.

-x-

I opened my eyes. Darkness...Attempt number two, I opened my eyes. Still darkness. I started to panic. Attempting to spread my wings, I could feel the muscles working, but I felt no movement. None. I screamed. Or at least, I tried to. No sound. I took a deep breath. That, I felt.

_Okay_ , I thought to myself, _calm down_. I could feel my heart pounding up a storm in my chest. I had to stay sane long enough to figure out where I was. If ever there was a time I wished the voice hadn't vanished, now was the absolute best time it could reveal itself.

But, of course I was never that lucky.

No, this was familiar, I realized, my heart starting to stutter at the terrifying, real possibility that this was a sensory deprivation tank. I pleaded with myself to think of the flock, my family, my mom, Ella, but all I could think was about the very fact that I would never see them again if I was trapped in a tank.

My resolve to stay calm shattered the same time a bright light broke through the darkness. My heart thumped wildly in my chest. So much so that it was painful now. I welcomed the blackness when it came.

-x-

I breathed heavily. Fighting off whitecoats would do that to you. I must have been getting weak if they didn't even need Erasers to restrain me. After they buckled me into a chair meant for mentally insane people, Jeb walked to the head of the table and flipped through some papers.

"What did you guys do to me now? "I asked, feeling weak. My eyelids were heavy, my wrists a little thinner than usual in the restraints. It had taken only three whitecoats to keep my flailing ass in the chair.

He found the one he was looking for and leaned on the table, staring at me. I filled my eyes and my face with as much anger and hate as I could, hoping it showed.

"What do you want?" I rasped, still squinting slightly at the bright florescent lights. "Three years. We defeated Itex three YEARS ago!  _What else do you want from us_?!"

"No," Jeb said softly. "Just you. This 'us' you keep mentioning—no, it's just you."

"What do you want?" I ground out, somewhat relieved. If they just wanted me, then they'd leave the rest of the flock alone. But a memory bubbled to the surface from that last time I'd woken. The four whitecoats. They'd mentioned trying to find the flock…

"We here talked about just that in the eight months you've been in the tank—"

"Eight months?!" I whispered, horrified.

"—and we've created a schedule that spans about the next five years."

"Really…" Where was the flock? No attempts to break me out? No. I can't lose faith in them just yet. Not ever. I blinked, suddenly, realizing just how much trust I still blindly had in this man. Who's to say he wasn't lying? How could I believe him so easily when he'd said it had been eight months?

"Here's how it plays out—"

"Oh, goody, I get to know what hell looks like beforehand! It's like  _friggin'_  Christmas!" I cheered sarcasticly, a bite in my voice despite my fatigue. "Praise the heavens, this has never happened to me before! A warning of things to come!"

Again, he continued as if I hadn't even spoken, but I know he heard me. "First, we're going to replace that chip back into your arm—"

"Mind if I ask what it does?" I pressed, pulling lightly on the straps.

"It tracks progressions in your life. Reactions to your environment and such." Finally! An answer! "Then, after we replace the chip, you'll be put in a new deprivation tank—it'll be a bit easier on your heart." He smirked. "Can't have you having a heart attack on us." He winked.

Disgusting. "Go to hell," I snarled.

He ignored my comment. Glancing down at the table, I noticed it was metal, but the restraints wouldn't let me bash my head against it.

"Then we'll run regular daily tests for about six months after which we'll be working on a new experiment, now that you'll be of a safer breeding age—"

"Excuse me— _what_?"

Jeb looked up at me and blinked. "We've just acquired the other part of the equation, so a lot of my colleagues are pushing for the experiment to be expedited." He flipped through a few pages. "We'll be moving you to a cell at that time—not a cage." He paused expectantly, and I watched him, disgusted at the thought he might be waiting for me to laugh at his poor joke. He sighed. "We need you to heal faster than the tank is allowing."

My eyes narrowed at the insinuation. "What if I refuse?"

He seemed to be picking and choosing which of my comments to acknowledge. He didn't answer. Well, not verbally. He lifted up a remote that I hadn't seen and, aiming over his shoulder at the plasma screen hanging on the wall, turned the large television on.

I coughed, choking on air, a failed sharp intake of breath caught in my throat.

Fang was sitting, shirtless, against a wall, running his hands through his hair like he did when he was angry, really, truly,  _honestly_ angry. This was beyond the livid, dangerously silent Fang. This was a Fang that didn't care who saw his emotions, because he was  _seething_. His face was angled down toward his knees, away from the camera.

"We'll kill him."

My glare shot to Jeb.

"That won't be so easy," I assured him.

"Oh?" He pressed another button and the camera angle changed. Same room, but a different view showed now. Fang's head was still angled away, but another figure was in the center view. Iggy. He was sitting against a wall perpendicular to Fang. Well, at least I solved the mystery of Fangs shirtlessness. Strips of black cloth were tied tightly around Iggy's thigh, right above the knee.

"Dude." Iggy's voice came through the speakers distorted, and vaguely recognizable. Despite the crystal clear visual technology, their sound system must have been from a decade ago. "I'll be fine. Everything will be fine." He paused, but not in a hesitant way. "When we get out, you should go see a doctor or something. I may not be able to see, but, dude, really," he joked. But the pain—from his leg, I guessed—was evident in his voice.

"I'll be alright," Fang said, his words sounding slurred and forced.

_Liar_. When he looked up to respond to Iggy, I caught a glimpse of him. Even through a camera lens, he didn't look well. His usual olive tone faded to a deathly light pale, and bright hectic spots of pink covered his cheeks and forehead.

"Let him go," I started to say, but while I had been preoccupied with Fang, a whitecoat had come up and sedated me. How weak was I?

-x-

Fang and Iggy snapped their heads toward the screeching of the large metal door being opened, tensing. Fang tried to slide up the wall to his feet, preparing to defend himself and Iggy.

"Put her in here with them until the tank is ready," Jeb ordered and a whitecoat gently, yet still roughly, placed Max on the ground and shut the door quickly.

"Max," Fang breathed, stumbling over and kneeling next to her. Iggy slid across the floor next to him, audibly gnashing his teeth with every quick, jerky movement, and helped Fang get her to a more relaxed position on her back and away from the door.

While his blood ran cold at finally seeing what the School had done to her, he couldn't stop the tidal wave of relief that washed over him at seeing her just breathing in front of him. He brushed her hair from her face, damp and cold.

He scanned her quickly, a loose fitting sweater and a pair of ratty scrubs covering her legs. The bones in her wrists were a little more prominent than he remembered, her cheeks a little more sunken. But he tried to commit her face to memory. Fang had panicked a few times, waking from a light, fitful sleep where he had dreams he couldn't remember what she looked like. It'd been so long…

But he couldn't find signs of torture, lingering effects of any experiments they'd done. Physically, at least…


	4. Chapter 4

I groaned, feeling surrounded by consciousness and cold air. The contrast to waking in the isolation tank soothed me just a little, but knowing I was still in the School somewhere kept me rigid in my skin. Pulling my eyes open, the first thing I saw was a very worried Fang. I sat up slowly and rubbed my aching head.

"How're you feeling?" he asked. I turned to get a better look at him, rolling onto my knees. Simply reaching out and taking his jaw in my hand, I held back a gasp at how hot his skin was. I tilted his face this way and that, using my other hand to brush his hair away. "What are you—" He swatted my hand away.

I cut him off. "The camera," I said, gesturing over my shoulder with my thumb at the small black box in the corner that hung conspicuously from the ceiling. I took his hands in mine—they were so cold.

"I'm fine," he muttered.

"Where's your jacket?" I scolded. "You're not fine, you're stupid." I pulled off my sweatshirt and chucked it at his face. Well, it wasn't my sweatshirt—it belonged to the whitecoats—but they had given it to me when they decided that I should not walk around naked. The sweatshirt was too big for me anyways, but it would fit Fang for now. Anything to cover up his chest...

As he put that on, I scooted across the floor a few feet over to Iggy, who was still slumped against the wall. "What did you do?" I asked, letting my fingers flutter feather light across the bloody strips of shirt wrapped around his leg. The blood had long dried and there wasn't any sign it was still bleeding. That was good.

"Whitecoats," he muttered. "What about you?"

I looked down at myself, but before I could say anything, Fang was already poking and prodding my leg, making me wince.

"Her leg is bent at a funny angle about two to three inches below the knee," Fang described to Iggy, who also began touching, but softer.

"An old break," he said. "Healed all wrong. Sorry, Max, but once we get out we'll have to re-break it." Iggy's face was apologetic. I groaned mentally, but couldn't help the swell in my chest at the thought of escaping soon. Which reminded me…

"How did you guys get in here, anyways?" I asked.

"Came to bust you out," Fang said simply with a grin, reclaiming his spot in the corner.

"Getting caught in the middle of a rescue mission isn't particularly something to smile about, dumbass," I ranted. "That's typically rule number one,  _don't get caught._ " Seriously, he was seventeen now, he should know how not to get caught. But his eyes widened a fraction and his eyebrows rose then dropped quickly. Was he urging me to play along? If…no…what kind of plan…he didn't…

Some say realization hit them like a ton of bricks, well, if you measure this realization in the matter of bricks, I'd have been hit by an entire brick house. And in my chest, I felt like it. I felt like all the wind had been knocked out of me for a second in one, horrifying realization that my family is seriously stupid.

"You  _morons_!" I growled, reaching out to punch Fang in the leg, but it was a lot weaker than I'd intended. My words had double meaning, a hidden, deeper meaning that I knew Fang and Iggy would understand, and the face value for whatever whitecoat happened to be listening in on the videos. "What kind of…"

They had  _meant_  to get caught.

"I don't wanna know—" I started, but the door swung open and Jeb, flanked on either side by erasers, entered the room. I gripped the hood of Fang's sweatshirt and stood up awkwardly, dragging him with me. "You told me you'd kill him," I snarled. "Well, if he dies because you can't keep him healthy, then what will you have to hold above my head? I'll  _kill you_."

"Thanks  _mom_ ," Fang muttered sarcastically before falling into a coughing fit for a few seconds. He really needed…appropriate medical attention. I made a mental note to take him to Dr. Martinez's house as soon as we escaped. She was probably the only medical professional we could trust right now.

We stood, glaring at each other for a few seconds before Jeb spoke.

"Change of plans, Maximum."

"Oh, too bad. What's the new schedule look like now?"

Jeb motioned the two erasers forward. "You're going to the new tank a few days ahead of schedule. I'm doing this for your own safety, really."

"The what? What about your plan?"

He crossed his arms over his chest. "I told you, some collegues were pushing to move up the breeding experiment, I couldn't hold them off any longer."

Rage spilled in my chest. "If you were worried about my  _safety_ I wouldn't  _be here."_

He sighed in exasperation. "You've grown dense in your old age, Maximum—"

"I'm only seventeen!"

"—and for an experiment, that's an extremely long investment, especially for an experiment that so violently misbehaves." He motioned to the two Erasers with a couple flicks of his fingers

"Woah, woah! Hold it! Stop!"

I took a shaky step backwards and nearly tripped over Fang. He steadied me, his hands on my upper arms. I realized he'd just heard about where they were taking me and the breeding experiment. Through the fabric of my long-sleeved shirt, I could feel his freezing cold fingers tremble.

"What about the chip?" I asked, my voice as shaky as Fang's hands.

"Already in," he smirked. Gosh, did I just wanna hit him. Just once. Please, if there is some sort of higher power out there watching me, let me just sock him  _once_  before I have to die.

Fang stepped in front of me and I realized that the erasers weren't for me, but for Fang and Iggy—both weakened drastically. Jeb reached over and grabbed my wrist, thin and boney from the lack of food.

As soon as we got into the hall, I took my first swing, collecting every ounce of energy in my body. Hearing my knuckle crack as it connected with his face was like music. I chose to ignore the searing pain as I smiled. Damn that felt amazing. Jeb fell to his knees.

I walked up and my knee connected with his head, which then connected with the wall, before he fell to the floor, unconscious. Chuckling at what I planned to do, I pulled a pen out of his pocket and snapped it in half, gently touching the pointy edges to make sure they were sharp enough. I leaned over his face and began to carve into his cheek.

About two years ago, we tried to settle into a permanent home. We did for a while. Before we were forced to leave, Fang and Gazzy got into video games like crack addicts. Iggy just…listened to them play—not exactly much fun. Gazzy was speaking text-talk for weeks.

I stood up and admired my word. But it didn't last.

"Pay attention, Sweetie!" a sickeningly sweet voice chimed behind me.

A prick and I was done.


	5. Chapter 5

Fang stumbled as an eraser shoved him down the hallway and into a small room. He was shoved into a chair next to Iggy and told to wait.

"I think she got the message," Iggy whispered to Fang when they were alone.

"Yeah, I don't know about that. Are you sure?" Fang bit back sarcastically. His eyes darted around the room looking for escape routes, but he only found an air vent, which was welded to the ceiling. Nice. He'd have to wait until they had their guard down—they seem to have caught onto the air ventilation system being all the rage among teen mutant escapees. Then again, he and Iggy had bulked up a little since puberty. Would they even still fit in them?

He began to cough again, his throat feeling like it was being torn apart, a fire licking and burning it.

Jeb walked in with a bottle of water and a little paper cup with two pills and set them in front of Fang. Ha. Hilarious. He let Max get to him. Fang had to keep from laughing as he leaned forward and opened the bottle, pushing the small tan pills around in the cup and deciding they were nothing more than common ibuprofen.

But when he looked through the clear bottle—searching for any signs that it had been tampered with—he saw something on Jeb's face that made him laugh. Iggy visibly flinched away.

"What's so funny?" he asked Fang. He had never heard Fang laugh like that…or as long as he was. Sure, he'd let out a quiet chuckle, even a rare laugh. But Fang was actually having trouble composing himself.

"Max…" he laughed again. "Max…wrote…well, she carved…" Laugh. "Carved 'Max Pwns' on Jeb's face." He burst out laughing the same time Iggy did. Fang had memory flashbacks of Gazzy and all his 'pwnage' and cracked up all over again.

Slowly the laughing turned into coughs. And what startled Fang enough to sober him up was that, when he pulled his hand away, he saw blood. Not a lot, but enough to be worrysome. He let out a breath.

"Let's get down to business," Fang said flatly, wiping his hand on his jeans hoping no one noticed what had gone on. "What do you want?"

Fang?

Angel. Awesome, Fang thought. They could finally bust out. If Angel was contacting him then they were ready on the outside. He needed to let Iggy know without Jeb noticing. After all, Jeb taught them how to signal each other, so tapping Iggy's hand was out.

Leave that to me…

Fang saw Iggy roll his neck—a movement that he realized Jeb did not know at all.

Fang, Angel thought to him Iggy needs one more thing before he's ready, just go along with whatever he says, okay?

Sure, Fang responded.

Iggy stood up and leaned over the table, taking a pen from Jeb's coat pocket. "What are you—"

"You want to see what I've learned, even being blind?" he chuckled darkly and Fang suppressed a shudder. Iggy could be creepy when he wanted to. He had the 'mad scientist' thing going very well for him. Iggy took a deep breath before flinging the pen across the table, hitting Jeb in a spot on his neck. Jeb tensed, flinching from the hit before scowling.

Nothing happened and Fang was about to say something when Angel interrupted him.

Wait for it…

Fang looked for the pen without being obvious. So that's why Iggy threw it there, Fang thought. Iggy had calculated the direction and position of Jeb by the sound of his voice and then guessed where his voice box was. From there he could determine where the pen would land if it bounced off him. Fang did the calculations a lot slower than Iggy, but he looked at where it should have landed and, sure enough, there was the black ink pen inconspicuously located between Iggy's feet.

"Enough goofing off," Jeb snapped, rubbing his neck. He accidentally scratched the carving on his cheek and made it bleed.

"Shoot," he muttered before standing and heading for the door. "I'll be right back, just wait here."

"On three," Fang whispered too low for Jeb. "Ready," he paused and waited for the door to open. "ONE!"

Iggy and Fang leapt across the table and, while Iggy knocked out Jeb, Fang held the heavy metal door open.

"Quick, go!" Fang whisper yelled, not knowing who was in the hallway.

Iggy raced past and Fang took one last look at the bleeding scratched on Jeb's pale cheek before letting the door slam shut, a loud clang echoing in the empty hall. Fang paused and waited for Iggy to tell him that it was clear. When Iggy nodded, they took off in the direction of the room they had been in. Once they got there, Fang started coughing so bad that Iggy had to stop running and race back to him.

"You okay?" Iggy asked hurriedly, yet concerned.

"Yeah," Fang rasped, grateful Iggy couldn't see the blood in his hand. He opened the door to their cell. "Get what you need and let's go!"

While Iggy collected his materials, Fang coughed. Come on, he thought to himself. This is definitely no time to get sick!

"Come on, Gasman's waiting for us on the other side of the building."

"Which way is Max?" Fang asked, glancing down the halls, fists ready to strike.

"Max?" Iggy asked, looking confused. "Oh, her!"

"Yeah, her," Fang growled, angry that he had actually forgotten.

"Chill out," Iggy said. "Where do you think I'm going? Angel says to go this way—" He pointed to the right with perfect aim for a blind guy. "—and then take the first left, second right, down a flight of stairs, a right and then the first room on the left is where Max is."

Fang didn't respond, he flew—not literally—down the hallway, taking the directions that Angel had given them. Three times on their way, they were nearly caught, but at the last minute, they'd duck down a hallway or into an abandoned room.

Fang came to a halt right in front of her door and tried the knob. Locked.

I already sent Nudge in. I knew it was locked from the beginning—

Why didn't you say anything? Fang thought.

Didn't see the need. He could practically hear her shrugging in his head and clenched his teeth to keep from lashing out. He needed to stay level headed or this wasn't going to work.

Fang could almost see the angelic smile that that child could emit to make anyone forget why they were mad at her. Footsteps pounded lightly down the hall and Fang turned, ready to fight, but was met by a flash of dark skin and wild black hair. Nudge. He sighed in relief. Just on the other side of this door, Max was there, waiting.

"Get it open," Fang growled to the door.

"I'm working on it," Nudge snapped, her fingers flying over the metal surface of the knob. Seconds later, the door clicked open with a solid beep and Fang was inside, looking around.

There, near the corner, was a tank. Something straight from a science fiction movie—a tank that usually held a clone of somebody, sleeping in a liquid, wearing an oxygen mask. This was exactly that. Max was floating, naked, in water, her ankles chained to the base. Lights in the huge, circular metal base tinted the water with an orangey glow. Her hair splayed out around her, occasional bubbles shooting up from the base and dancing with her hair before popping on the surface to keep the water from becoming stagnant.

Fang's breath escaped him in a single instant, seeing her so thin and floating inside the tank.

"Is she in here?" Iggy asked, glancing around the room. A computer sat to one side, across from the tank. There was a cold metal examination table in the center and a countertop covered in so many things that just fueled the fury in the pit of his stomach.

"Yeah," Nudge breathed behind him. "She's in here."


	6. Chapter 6

Fang's hand touched the glass for a moment, noting how warm it was, before tearing around the base, looking for a way to get her out.

Nudge was behind him, softly describing it to him.

"Any ideas on how to get her out?" Iggy asked her, stating the obvious. "Can you do your weird seeing tech-y stuff to see how they got her in there?"

"It's not  _weird_ ," she snapped.

"Nudge," Fang urged, his heart pounding in his chest in a way he didn't like. He could feel his body warming, his energy disappearing quickly. And they didn't have much time to get her out. Warning alarms from the floor above echoed down to them barely, and he was worried this would be their first stop.

"Angel doesn't know, she just says to hurry," Nudge murmured, staring at her leader in disbelief. She shook her head quickly, putting on a stern face and held her hand up to it. "Getting her in was pretty complicated. A lot of commands on the computer. It will take me a few minutes to find the commands to get her out."

"I know of one way," Fang grunted, unscrewing a pipe from the wall that led to the base of the tank. It hissed loudly and the bubbles in the tank ceased. He really hoped he hadn't just cut off her air supply. "Nudge, Iggy, one of you get ready to catch her!"

Fang jogged over to Max and swung at the glass with as much force as he could muster, knuckles white around the pipe. It shattered instantly and water rushed all over the floor. Max's body twisted in the rush, her feet still chained, and began to fall. She fell into the open arms of Iggy.

"Put this on her," Fang said, handing over the sweater she had given him earlier, exposing his chest again. While Iggy put the sweater over Max, Fang watched as Nudge worked her powers to get Max unchained as fast as they could, letting the metal twist and crumble like paper.

 _Anyone coming?_  Fang asked Angel. Someone had to have heard that crash. It was really loud. And he was willing to bet they were way out of time. Guaranteed the other whitecoats knew exactly what their goal was now.

 _Two whitecoats are wondering what that sound was, they're about to come look._  Angel responded quickly.  _Jeb came to upstairs, they're sending down a pack of Erasers…but they're different. Smarter. They have a hierarchy…_

 _Distract them,_  Fang thought, stressing hoping that she would control them as long as she could—they'd had a long discussion about how she should only use that power when the situation called for it. And right now, the situation was _screaming_ for it.

"Alright, she's good to go," Iggy said breathlessly, throwing her over his shoulder.

Fang lapsed into an intense coughing fit again, and he looked at his hand, the amount of blood that he was coughing up was increasing. But this time was different. He looked up to see Nudge staring at him, wide-eyed.

"Fang—"

"We don't have time," he muttered, whipping his hand on the seat of his jeans. He grabbed her hand and dragged her towards the door.

Once they were in the hallway, they heard the first explosion. It was far away, but the building still shook beneath them. Fang rubbed his hand across his chin, feeling the stubble there. His thoughts were flip-flopping between  _this is too easy_ and  _we're never going to make it out_.

"That was the fence, come on! Iggy, you got that bomb ready?!" Nudge yelled, leading the way to a window. It was way too small for Fang or Iggy to get through, but a fourteen-year-old Nudge would fit perfectly. "Place it here on the windowsill and let's go. There's a room right around the corner where we'll be safe. Angel says to hurry, the Erasers are coming, she lost hold of them."

Fang carefully took Max from Iggy, cradling her in his arms freeing Iggy's hands to rip apart the pen he'd stolen from Jeb and placed the small metal spring inside and snapped the boxy-looking bomb shut. "Alright," He called. "Let's go!"

Once they were inside the room, one full of computers and cubicles, Fang looked at Nudge, who was holding out Max's clothes. She must have snagged them before they'd left the room Max had been in.

"Put them on her," Fang whispered, setting Max on the ground by Nudge before turning to Iggy. "How long do we have before it goes off?"

"About 30 seconds now. I wasn't sure how long we would need to get a safe distance away so I set it for 45 seconds." Nudge threw the sweater back to Fang, pulling the scrubs top down over Max's head.

And, unfortunately, 20 seconds later, Max started to wake up, fully clothed now. Fang was pulling his sweatshirt over his head when he saw her sit up.

"Five seconds!" Iggy yelled, getting to the ground, Nudge tucked safely underneath him.

"What the—" Max was cut off when Fang tackled her to the ground just as the far wall exploded. The explosion was loud and debris went flying everywhere, some lightly bouncing off Iggy and Fang's backs just enough to leave them sore later.

After all was quiet, Fang slowly sat up, brushing pieces of wall off Max and himself.

"I thought you said we'd be safe here," Iggy snapped at Nudge.

"It was  _your_ bomb!" she growled back, jabbing him in the chest with a finger. "Besides, you're alive, aren't you? Let's go, Gaz and Angel are waiting." She stood up, a little wobbly at first, but she gained her balance and then took a running start before diving out the large hole in the corner of the wall about 10 yards away.

-x-

I looked over wearily to see Nudge jump out the window. Was this their great plan? The pounding in my head was loud and aggravating. That combined with the ringing in my ears from the bomb and the delirium from the haze of unconsciousness, I barely heard Fang talking to me.

"Can you fly?" He asked again. He'd grown paler—if possible—and his red cheeks were more definable. His voice was a lot weaker and less forceful, a concerning hoarseness to it. I reached up and brushed my fingertips across his blue-tinted lips.

"I can fly, can you?" I countered, letting him pull me to my feet.

Our heads snapped in the direction of the door to see four or five Erasers racing down the hall towards us. We jumped up and raced for the window.

"Guess we'll find out," Fang muttered to himself snapping his wings open, probably not meaning for me to hear. As we flew towards a hole in a large fence that domed over the entire School, my mind raced to catch up with the situation and piece together what I had missed between being dragged out of the cell with Fang and Iggy.

I tried to push into a super speed of  _any_ sort, but most of my focus was spent on making sure to keep a rhythmic flapping so I didn't fall. My body felt like it was filled with lead, and I pushed myself to follow the silhouettes of Iggy and Nudge in front of us through a large hole at the base of the fencing.

We shot through and continued on for a few miles, heading towards a lake. I could see two dots in the sky that I knew without a doubt were the Gasman and Angel, hovering, waiting for us to catch up before we finally escaped.

I felt tears falling down my face and I watched a few fall to the lake below us, surprised on the emotion I couldn't hold back. That wasn't the only thing I saw fall to the lake below. I guess being in a sensory deprivation tank for a few months made my reaction time slower because he was half way down toward the water before I even realized what was going on. No one else saw it. Iggy and Gazzy were wrapped up in dramatic conversation, and Nudge had her back to him.

" _Fang_!" I screamed, diving for him without a second thought. But my body was still slow and sluggish. He was limp, falling head first for the water. I could see even from a couple hundred feet up that it was too shallow to land in.

Iggy got to him before I could, his feathers brushing mine as he dove, and Gazzy got to me before I hit the water. My wings crumpled as Gazzy slammed into my back, his wings shooting out to slow our decent. As soon as we were slow enough, I pushed Gazzy away, flying on my own. We all followed Nudge and Angel as they landed in a clearing on the north edge of the large lake.

"Fang!" I called when I skidded messily to a stop. Iggy had laid him on his back in the grass, Nudge and Angel looking down at the pair worriedly. I fell to my knees next to his motionless form. "What's wrong with him?"

"He's got an intense fever," Iggy said lowly, "but I can't find any kind of injuries."

"He's just sick," Nudge added quietly. "He was coughing up blood before."

My eyes shot to her, but she was nearly shaking like a leaf, looking scared. "Alright, alright," I breathed, standing, trying desperately to grasp onto a form of a plan. "We need to get away from here  _now."_

"Dr. Martinez," Angel supplied helpfully and I nodded. She was probably our best bet right now.

"Alright, Iggy, can you carry him for a few hours?" I asked and Iggy nodded, already pulling him off the ground by his arms. "Good. Lets go."

"Can  _you_ fly?" Gazzy asked skeptically, holding a hand out to me as I prepared to take off. I looked around to the the others watching me as well. "I mean, you've lost some weight, I could probably carry you if you—"

Angel handed me something wrapped in paper. "She'll be okay. I have two more, you can eat on the way." I looked down at the fast food burger in my hands and smiled at her gratefully.

"I'll be alright. Where are we?"

Angel off in a direction to her left and we all took off. "We're about 300 miles from Dr. Martinez's place. If we need to stop, I'll know," she called over the wind.

"Angel," I warned.

"Don't worry, I won't be reading, only…feeling for general  _ideas_ ," she argued lightly.

I bit down into the burger instead of responding. I nearly melted right there. When was the last time I actually ate food? Like, real not-from-a-feeding-tube  _food_? I probably should have been wore concerned over that fact, but between my euphoria over the burger and my worry over Fang, I had no room in my head for anything else.

"What if he wakes up?" Nudge called over, looking down at Iggy carrying Fang, who was still limp in his arms.

"We'll worry about that if it happens," I said, not really sure myself. I wanted nothing more than to gather energy, take Fang myself, and super-speed to my Mom's. But life never works like that. And he was solidly unconscious a couple hours later when we landed in her backyard. My feet nearly gave out and my whole back ached.

"Should we knock?" Nudge asked, looking around at the darkened windows facing us.

"Knock," Angel told her, helping Iggy hold Fang up. "Ella's out, but Dr. Martinez is reading in the living room."

Nudge bounced up to the back porch and knocked on the door a couple times, while I quickly made my way over to where Iggy and Angel were holding Fang upright, still limp.

"You okay?" I asked Iggy, putting my hands on Fang's cheeks. They were warmer than when we'd taken off.

"Tired," he muttered. "But I'll be okay once we find somewhere to put him."

"I could have taken a turn," Gazzy mumbled, coming up behind him.

The backdoor swung open, spilling light into the backyard. "What's going on?" Mom demanded.

I looked over my shoulder at her and gestured to Fang. "Help him, please."

"Oh, my—" Nudge and I parted to make way for Mom as she dashed towards us, immediately picking Fang's face up in her hands to get a better look. "Alright, you guys go inside, wait in the living room." She touched Iggy's arm. "Help me get him upstairs to the guest bedroom."

Mom replaced Angel and I herded the younger kids into the house after Mom and Iggy. I felt a weight lifting from my chest, a knot loosening in my stomach at the thought of Mom being here, helping. Was this what it was like having a mother, someone you could depend on and go to when you had problems?

"He'll be okay," Angel said after a few minutes. Her and Nudge had taken a seat on the couch, Gazzy making himself at home in the recliner. He looked ready to pass out. "You can stop pacing. You're going to make your nail bed bleed."

I pulled my thumb out of my mouth and looked down at it, not realizing I'd been chewing on the nail. "Stop reading my mind," I snapped, spinning to face her.

Iggy came into the room and flopped down next to Nudge with a sigh.

"Did she say anything?" I demanded, but Iggy shook his head. It was going to be a long night…


	7. Chapter 7

I paced around the kitchen, the anxiety making me itch.

"You're going to wear a hole in the floor," Ella stated flatly, looking bored out of her mind at the kitchen table, her head resting in her hand. She'd gotten home maybe ten minutes after we'd gotten there. A quick update and she offered to make us something to eat, which Gazzy and Iggy jumped on.

I shot her a glare. "I just don't know what it could be. Pneumonia maybe?"

"Possibly," Angel whispered.

"Sit," Iggy commanded, pointing to an empty chair next to him. "You're giving me a migraine and I can't even see you!"

Reluctantly, I obeyed, giving my tired feet some rest so that in five or ten minutes I could continue my pacing. Ella pushed a plate of sandwiches at me, but I couldn't even think of food right now. Finally, after forever and a half, Mom emerged from the hall way and I shot up to my feet.

"You guys can't see him yet," she said quickly, putting her hands on my shoulders firmly. "What he has is highly contagious. How updated are you guys on your shots?"

I laughed. "Updated? I'm not even sure we've ever  _had_ shots. I mean, I've had my tetanus shot—" I smiled at her, "—but the rest of them haven't had any. I'm sure  _something_ in the hundreds of injections we've had over the years did  _something_ —"

"Alright," Mom sighed. "Well, until you're vaccinated, you cannot go see him."

"What exactly does he have?" I asked. I sat down in my chair, not wanted to be standing up if she was about to tell me he was dying.

She took a deep breath. "He has some kind of bird flu would be my guess. I'd need to do some blood work to know for sure. There have been a few cases of it cropping up further south, but there haven't been any recorded cases of it in the US. I dosed him with some general anti-viral drugs, but I won't know until morning if he needs something different."

I wanted to bang my head into the wall.

"So he's not going to die?" Nudge asked, speaking for the first time since we got there.

"No," She shook her head quickly. "I've given him a high dose of the anti-viral—nearly twice what I should have. He'll live, I just need to find the right medications and doses."

"Un-freaking-believable," I whispered. Are you kidding me? We can get freaking avian sickness now, too?

"How did he catch it way up here then?" Iggy mused. "And it's not like our immune systems are the worst."

"Yeah," Dr. Martinez responded. "That's true in most cases. But there have been illnesses in the past that attacked healthy people  _because_ they had good immune systems. It triggers an overreaction which caused symptoms like coughing up blood."

"But how did he catch it if cases have only been further south?" Nudged asked.

"We were in Mexico when Max was caught," Angel explained. "I think he started getting sick then."

"That was months ago," I frowned.

"I don't know," Mom shrugged, pulling down a mug from a cabinet. "Like I said, I would need to run more blood tests tomorrow."

"When can we see him?" I asked quietly.

"Uh, no thanks," Nudge declared. "I don't want to get sick like that, Fang can keep it."

"Well, I'd like to keep you guys away from him until I'm sure he's not contagious," Mom explained as she fixed a cup of tea for herself. "It'll be a day or two, I think. I'll take some blood samples here tomorrow morning and test them at work. There's no real vaccine for this, so we just have to wait it out and hope the anti-virals work."

I sighed heavily and looked over the remaining flock. Angel and Nudge looked back wearily, and Iggy looked like he was about to fall over with exhaustion. I put a hand on Gazzy's back when I realized he had been very quiet and he jerked awake.

"Alright, let's get some sleep then," I decided, forcing a laugh. I made myself think of things other than Fang so that Angel wouldn't catch on to me. I knew I would have trouble sleeping tonight. What with my body so used to watch shifts. I motioned for everyone to get to the living room.

Mom left quietly and brought in some extra blankets and two sleeping bags so that two or three of us could sleep on the two couches and the recliner and two would sleep on the floor. Fine by me. Gazzy took the recliner while Nudge and Angel occupied the couches. That left Iggy and me on the floor. I moved my sleeping bag as far away from him as possible without him noticing. No need to wake him up when I went to check in on Fang.

"What if he doesn't get better?" Nudge whispered after I shut all the lights off and said goodnight to Mom and Ella.

"Go to sleep," I told her. "He will. He'll be fine."

"What if  _we_ get sick?" she asked. "I don't want to—"

"Nudge, you won't get sick, I promise," Angel told her, clearly annoyed. "Go to sleep."

I reached up onto the couch and squeezed Nudge's foot. "If you do, Mom's here."

"I want to stay here, Max," she whispered down to me, peeking over the edge of the couch. "I want a house like this. I want to go to school with Ella. I don't want to be afraid for my life anymore."

"I know, Sweetie, I know," I said, because it was all I could say. I couldn't promise her something I couldn't provide, and I didn't want to fill her with false hope. Right now, I wasn't sure how long we could, or even  _should_ stay. Once Fang was better, we'd need to regroup and figure out a plan then.

About a few hours later, I knew everyone was asleep and I was pretty sure myself that I wouldn't be sleeping at all. Not when one of my flock wasn't there. As quiet as I could, I rolled out of the sleeping back and tiptoed down the hallway and straight into the room I'd heard Iggy and Mom take Fang to.

And of course when I peeked in, his was lying on the bed, on top of the blankets glaring at me.


	8. Chapter 8

I shut the door as quietly as I could and grinned in the darkness. "What?" I whispered as innocently as I could.

"Go away. If you stay in here and get sick, I'll murder you."

"Kind of harsh, don't you think?" I asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him. He winced as he pushed himself so that he was leaning against the wall on the other side of the bed—as far away from me as he could get.

"Just leave me alone. Did your Mom tell you what I have?" He snapped. "You just got out of the school after  _months,_ we don't know how good your immune system is right now."

"She told me," I hissed back. "And I'm not fifteen anymore. You can't tell me what to do."

"I never could," he grumbled.

"I'll be  _fine_ ," I pressed. "I just wanted to come see how you were doing."

"Like I said, if you get sick…" he trailed off.

There was a long pause and I just looked him over in the moonlight. He was a lot less pale, but his cheeks were still tinted red.

"How are you feeling?" I asked quietly.

He hesitated. "I should be asking you," he murmured, lying on his side against the wall. I folded my arms on top of the comforter and rested my chin on top. The weight of the day was finally hitting me and my mind wandered a bit. I hadn't slept in a bed, even had  _real_ sleep, in months. Fang reached across the bed and brushed his fingers across my cheek. "You've lost weight."

"Oh, how nice of you to notice," I mocked.

He offered up a tired smile and a sigh. "I did miss you," he said quietly. "I didn't think we'd find you after a while."

"I would have gotten out eventually."

He pressed his lips into a line and frowned. "You weren't conscious often enough to try, Max."

"I'm here now," I offered, taking his hand in mine. "Now I'm just worried about you."

"Nothing to be worried about," he said nonchalantly. "I'm more concerned about what they were going to do with you."

"The breeding thing? I'm not worried about that right now." I grasped quickly for a change of subject before he could continue down that road. I wasn't ready to think about that yet. "How are you feeling though, for real?"

"Everything hurts. Throat is on fire. Hurts to breath."

"Other than that?"

"I'm fine," he smirked. "Other than that."

"Good."

"Max, maybe you should…" I gave him a glare that made him switch thoughts. I was not leaving. I wasn't sure if I would have stayed or gone back to my sleeping bag after I'd checked in on him and he'd been sleeping. "How are  _you_ feeling?"

"I'm fine." My mind dusted over the memories again and I scrunched up my face, willing myself not to think about it. Seeing Fang and Iggy in the cell, being thrown in with them, fighting the Erasers off as they stripped me down and put me in that horror movie set piece of a tank. Then I remembered one sharp detail like a splinter. When they put me in the tank…I was naked. I lifted my head and glanced at the fabric that I was dressed in, a pair of soft scrubs. Oh, jeez. "Who…" I felt myself blush and I wanted to slap myself.

"Who what?"

I took a deep breath. "Who dressed me?" He blushed too—that was new…

"Nudge," he mumble. He paused and I thought that was it. "Are you sure you're okay? Because seeing you in there, like that, it was…"

"I'm fine." I glanced down at my leg and groaned.

"What is it?" his voice panged with concern, even in a whisper.

"Iggy's gonna have to re-break my leg soon."

"Well, if you don't wanna limp when you walk," Fang said with a half shrug, trying to lighten the mood.

It worked. I flicked his foot and he jerked it away.

"You're hands are cold!" he complained. I grabbed his foot. "Quit it! You're going to wake everyone up."

I stood up and stretched, content. Fang was going to live. He was already bouncing back—a lot quicker than when he'd had surgery when we were fourteen. Damn. He didn't need surgery because of this illness. Relief flooded my veins and I swam in the feeling. My flock was whole again and we'd be alright. We were in Mom's protection for now. We had food, warmth, a temporary refuge.

I headed for the door.

"Talk to Nudge, tomorrow," Fang blurted out.

"What?" I stopped and turned around, walking back over to the bed. "Why?"

"Back at the School," he mumbled, staring out the window by the foot of the bed. "I was coughing up blood. I tried not to let Iggy know, but Nudge saw. She didn't say anything about it to anyone, but I think it freaked her out a little." I nodded slowly, understanding.

"That actually makes sense. She said some things earlier—I'll talk to her. But, to be honest, I was scared, too," I confessed with a sigh, sitting down on the edge of the bed and rubbing my tired eyes. I hadn't done this whole admittance-of-emotions thing, but it's become a lot more frequent lately. Especially to Fang. Ever since he'd left, when he came back…things just started to spill…Anything to keep him there.

"I was, too," he whispered. "I thought we were done with them." Him and me both. Sure, we'd come across them on our own, trying to destroy their Schools and all. But they hadn't come after us directly. Fang took a deep breath and then looked up at me. His eyes were deep and reflected brightly in the light of the full moon. "What did they do to you? I mean, aside from the breeding plan, what did they do?"

I shook my head. "They replaced the chip," I muttered, my fingertips brushing the raised pink scar along my arm. They had put it in the other arm this time.

"Great," Fang groaned. "Please don't try to cut this one out."

I scowled at him. "I'm not going to, but it needs to come out still," I grumbled, standing. "But they said it was a chip to track my body, changes and stuff. So it's gotta be transmitting that data to them."

"Do the rest of us have one?" he asked after a beat of silence.

"Maybe. We can talk to Mom about that later." I paused, grasping at another thought flying through my head. "How did you guys even find me?"

"I tried. We followed the direction the Flyboys took you for days, but got nowhere." He took a deep breath and adjusted himself against the wall. "I posted on the blog that you were kidnapped and we followed some false leads for months. Then we finally got a hit. Some guy in Idaho said that he'd seen some news story on some chopper that crash-landed a few miles from him. Locals had said they'd seen werewolves after it crashed, but those were just rumors. So we flew up, just in case."

"Erasers," I mumbled.

He nodded. "So the flock and I devised a plan that had a high chance of you getting out—"

"And getting caught has a high chance…how?"

He threw a glare at me and continued. "So we decided that Iggy and I—the largest of our group—would get caught and plant a bomb on the inside white Angel stayed outside with Nudge and the Gasman. Nudge was unsure of how she could help, so she stayed out, but Gazzy was to plant a bomb near the fence on the outside. Turns out Nudge was needed on the inside, but it worked out alright."

"Yeah," I muttered, imagining everything that had gone on while I was away. Seems like they did okay without me. Their plan worked perfectly. Well, alright, not  _perfectly_ , but they'd managed to get in, get out, get  _me_ out, and get away without too much harm. There was Iggy's leg, though.

"But our plan  _was_  flawed," Fang said suddenly, as if reading my mind. "Iggy's leg was broken. We didn't think things completely through."

"But it worked. And he's healed for the most part—he was walking on it fine, even when we escaped. And I'm here, aren't I?"

"We got you thrown into that tank early," Fang stated sadly.

"Yeah, two days early. Hardly any difference."

"Who knows what they did to you," he argued.

"I do, Fang," I said, aggravated. "Would you just take a 'job well done' like a man and shut up? Not all plans are going to come out exactly like you want. And, as long as you succeed, take the consequences in stride."

He shifted so that he was lying on his stomach, his head on the pillow, and he sighed. "How do you do it?" He asked softly, closing his hand around mine.

"Do what?" I asked, moving so that I was sitting on the floor again, my arms folded on the bed so that I could rest my head a bit. I threaded my fingers through his and rubbed his thumb with mine.

"Lead as perfectly as you do?" His eyelids fluttered shut and I saw exactly how tired he looked, despite the fact that he had just been passed out for the last half a day.

"I have this friend. He's an amazing little helper," I chuckled. "Get yourself a second-in-command. They tend to keep you in line."

He shook his head slightly and said, "No, that sounds like a very difficult job, being  _your_ second-in-command. Full time job and then some." I glanced out the window and saw the sun just beginning to rise.

"Go to sleep, dork," I said, standing. "Mom will check on your in the morning."

Content that he would live for the most part, I made my way back to the living room as silently as I could and slipped back into my sleeping bag, which was  _so_ much more comfortable than an isolation tank, you would not  _believe_ …


	9. Chapter 9

"Should we just do it while she's asleep, surprise her?" someone whispered, waking me from a deep, dreamless sleep. I kept my eyes shut. Come on, five more minutes of this would be heaven right now. Everything was quiet for a few seconds before I felt arms around me, picking me up off the floor. A few moments of playing asleep later, I was placed on something soft—the couch?—and people started mumbling around me.

"Guys this is a bad, bad idea," Nudge argued quietly, not whispering like the others. "It's not going to be a surprise, it's torment and it's not right, not after  _our_ lives. This isn't funny."

"Yeah, but better to ask for forgiveness than permission," Iggy murmured, fingers rolling up the fabric on my pants to my knee.

"I don't think we should—it's gonna hurt," Gazzy grumbled, "she's gonna scream. It's one thing to scare her while she's asleep, it's another to hurt her."

Hurt?

"Shouldn't we have Dr. Martinez knock her out first and correct it herself—she's the expert!" Nudge again.

"She went to work. Besides, she's awake and listening to us," Angel told them, sounding bored.

I opened my eyes and smiled. Iggy was standing over me, flanked by Gazzy and Nudge, while Angel and Ella stood behind the couch. "You guys weren't planning to do something to me like, break my leg, were you?" I asked, sitting up. "After being traumatized at the School for months, you weren't  _possibly_ thinking about doing that while I was asleep."

"Yeah, they were," Nudge grumbled, crossing her arms and glaring at Iggy.

"That's just cruel, Iggy," I said. "You could have asked, I already said we could do it."

"They!?" Gazzy exclaimed, glaring pointedly at Nudge. "I didn't wanna do it either. Iggy was the only one who did."

Iggy shrugged. "I tried waking you up but you were out cold. Figured your little early morning trip wore you out."

"Well," I stood up, quickly changing the topic, heading for the kitchen. "I'm definitely not letting Mom give me drugs."

"Oh, come on," Ella laughed. Shit, wrong topic. "That was funny. Fang got a kick out of it, too."

"What?" Iggy and the others looked confused. Angel giggled as blurbs of the memory flashed through my eyes.

I spun and glared at the two of them. "You'd be smart never to mention that ever again. Both of you."

"Hey," Ella laughed, holding up her hands. "You said something about it first. I was just commenting."

"And I have no idea what was going on. I just heard you confess—" My hand landed over Angel's mouth and I jerked her to me playfully, feeling her lips curve up into an apologetic smile beneath my hand. I rolled my eyes and, when I was sure she wouldn't continue, I removed it.

Food. My stomach growled loudly as I headed for the kitchen, Iggy following me. "Has everyone eaten?" I asked, noting that it was only eight in the morning, according to the stove clock.

"Yeah," he nodded, taking a seat as I pulled a bowl down from a cabinet and searched for some cereal. "I cooked Dr. M some breakfast before she left for work this morning. Least I could do for her since she'd letting us stay."

Once I was sitting at the table with my Lucky Charms, I noticed the look Iggy was giving me. Like I was one of his more difficult bombs and he was trying to figure me out.

"What?" I asked slowly and his brow furrowed.

"I'm trying to think of a way to break your leg without it damaging any of the surrounding tissue," he mumbled. "Because where you broke it at, it's going to be extremely painful and I don't want to cause any more internal damage than there probably already is."

"What about your leg?" I countered, suddenly remembering. "Yours was broken, too." If mine was going to hurt like mad, maybe I could break Iggy's and get away with it as revenge. I crossed my fingers.

He grinned. "Mine healed correctly while we were still in the School. Fang and I created a splint." Damn.

I sighed and stood up after only a single bowl, rinsing it out in the sink and heading for the living room. Didn't want to end up puking rainbows everywhere if it was going to be as painful as Iggy was assuming it would be. The rest of the flock was already there waiting. My little support team.

"Aren't you supposed to be in school?" I asked Ella as I took a seat on the couch in front of the coffee table, propping my leg up. Angel sat next to me and gripped my hand while Gazzy and Nudge stood wearily behind Iggy.

Ella grinned wickedly. "The good thing about Mom going to work before the bus picks me up, is that she doesn't know when I skip."

"I didn't hear that," I muttered as Iggy once again rolled up my pant leg. Everything from my hip to my kneecap was fine, but after that, the bone went straight until you came to the break. The skin was raised slightly where the bone healed crookedly.

"Go for it," I began, but stopped when I saw a dark figure coming down the hallway.

"What are you doing?" Fang asked suspiciously, hand trailing the wall next to him like he thought he would fall over. As much as his complexion had returned, he still looked frail and sickly. That look didn't suit him at all and it made me feel uneasy.

"We're playing a game," I told him, trying to make the mood softer in light of what we were about to do. "Iggy breaks my leg and then I get to punch him in the face. Then I break someone's leg and they punch Iggy in the face. Then they break someone else's leg and punch Iggy in the face. You go in a circle."

"I feel abused," Iggy muttered, fingers pressing into my leg hard, exploring the remnants of the break.

Fang walked around and sat on my other side.

"Should you be up?" I asked him.

"I'm fine," he stressed. He  _looked_ fine. His skin was still a tad pale, but the hectic blotches of red were off his cheeks and his eyes were a lot clearer.

"Alright." I took a deep breath and held it. Iggy's cold hands lingered above my leg. He placed on hand right above the break and one hand below it, turning to place his sightless blue eyes on me.

"Ready?" I nodded vigorously, trying not to let my fear show on my face, and my hand moved from clutching the couch cushion to gripping Fang's thigh. His hand landed on top of mine and it distracted me enough.

Iggy took a deep breath. "On three—" Oh, crap. Three meant—"One!"

My scream filled the house as the audible snap filled my ears, a sickening sound that immediately threw me back into that hotel room. Smoke filled my lungs, debris covered my skin—

Fang squeezed my hand, prying it from his leg, and the motion pulled me back into the present.

Iggy smiled sheepishly at me. "Sorry, might have overdone it a little tiny bit." He proceeded to set it.

"Mother of  _god_ ," I ground out, really truly wanting to knock him in the face. I slammed my head against the back of the couch as he created a splint and wrapped up my leg, willing myself not to cry but feeling the pinch behind my eyes anyways. I waited for him to finish touching the new break, breathing slowly through clenched teeth. We had  _really_ gotten softer over the years. Three years ago and this break would have felt like a paper cut.

I was vaguely aware of Fang's hand in mine still.

"Next time," I panted, reaching for the glass of water Nudge held out to me. "Next time,  _I'll_ break my own damn leg."

"You broke it yourself in the first place," Iggy muttered.

"I did not," I snapped.

Ella appeared in the doorway of the living room, her face white as a sheet. "You okay?" I managed to ask between breaths, calming now that Iggy was sitting back on the coffee table with his hands nowhere near my leg.

"That was…" she whispered, the horror painted all over her face. "I've never seen…"

I grimaced. "Life of an experimental bird kid."

"You've had to do this before?" she asked, horrified.

"We'd be lying if we said no," Nudge murmured, putting an arm over her shoulder. "It gets easier though. Just keep thinking that now Max won't walk with that ridiculous limp anymore."

"Hey!" I protested.

"And," Nudge continued, "if we ever get chased again, Darwinism won't take over."

"That helps absolutely none," Ella said flatly. Nudge just grinned and Ella rolled her eyes before turning to Iggy. "Are you gonna make dinner tonight?" she asked hopefully, and Iggy blushed.

"Uh, sure." He muttered something about wires and such and left the room, followed by the Gasman.

Ella held up finger at me, or rather, Fang next to me. "Mom said you're to stay quarantined until she gets home from work."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "How does she think you're going to enforce that if you're at school?" But Ella just shrugged and smiled.

"Five minutes," Fang muttered, and then yawned, as he headed back down the hallway. "I left for five minutes."

"How long was he really out for?" Ella whispered to me.

"Just long enough for Iggy to fix my leg."

"Mmhmm," she pondered. "And how long did you stay in his room for last night?" I blushed and she, along with Angel and Nudge, laughed.

"I just checked in on him," I argued, carefully repositioning myself, distracted a little twinge of pan shot up my leg when I jostled it.

" _Just_?" Ella pried. I glanced over at Nudge and Angel, who were both smartly keeping their mouths shut. Or they didn't like talking about Fang like this.  _I_ didn't like talking about Fang like this. "Oh, come on, Max. I've known you have a thing for him since I met you guys."

"There is no  _thing_ ," I denied forcefully and Nudge scoffed, standing.

"Because it's so much more than a  _thing_ ," she laughed. "I think everyone has come to terms with this but you, Max." Angel just smirked, clearly knowing more than I wanted her to. Probably knowing more about it than  _I_ did, to be honest, what with her reading Fang's mind as well.

"Fang has a lot more defenses than you do," Angel said aloud with a giggle. "He doesn't think as loud."

I rubbed my face with my hands, willing the embarrassment to be over. I focused instead on the dull throbbing in my leg, no longer a sharp pain as it had been when Iggy had done the deed.

"Do you want some pain killers?" Ella asked, standing. She motioned for Nudge and Angel to follow her and left me alone in the living room, and I wished I could walk so I could leave myself. A few more hours maybe, I thought, gently prodding the splint Iggy had applied. Definitely by the time Mom got home.

If we were lucky, she'd probably never even know…


	10. Chapter 10

Half an hour later and I was lounging on the couch against Fang’s chest. He’d lasted longer than I would have thought before he got bored enough to venture back out. So there we were, flipping through the hundreds of boring channels. It was a Wednesday morning, Ella had explained. 

I sighed. Boredom was nearly painful. The pain killers Ella had given me were helping to numb the pain so that it fell to the background in my mind and I could focus on the stupid guide long enough to learn there was literally nothing on. Baby shows, talk shows, reality TV reruns…

My eyes lifted naturally when Fang’s arm that was wrapped around my shoulders holding me to him tightened.

-x-

Max looked up at him from his lap, adjusting her arm slowly so her elbow slid up his thigh behind her.

“Stop,” he warned, pulling her arm out straight.

Max smirked. “What’s the matter?” she did it again, this time hitting her mark, causing a reaction he really didn’t need right now.

He looked down at her. “Stop.”

Her smirk widened. “Am I making you uncomfortable?” She twisted in his lap so that she was on top of him now, pressing up against the front of him in a way he’d only ever dreamed of. His breath caught in his throat as one of her hands slid up his thigh, her lips millimeters from him. “Feels like that’s a no…”

“Max…” he breathed half a second before catching her lips. He barely felt the kiss, more distracted by a thought than the fact that Max was on top of him, the length of her pressed against the front of him, her hands all over him… He pushed her away gently and tried to sit up to see around her, but she held him down harder, an inviting and playful grin on her lips.

“What’s the matter?”

“Your leg—”

“What about my leg?” she frowned. “You don’t like my legs?”

“It was broken.” He forced his legs out from under hers and in a quick, swift motion, she was underneath him, her thighs pinching his waist in a way that shouldn’t have been legal. He looked away from her, despite the numerous distractions, and rand a hand down her calf, but the skin was smooth, the bones straight.

“Come here,” she cooed, ignoring him as she gripped the front of his shirt and pulled him down, her thighs sliding up as her ankles locked behind him.

That was it. He couldn’t help going along with her motions, now. His fingers found the hem of her shirt, which weren’t the scrubs she’d had on before…

“Stop hesitating,” she murmured into his neck, taking the skin there between her teeth. He couldn’t help the audible hissing he made with the sudden intake of breath. Again, following her lead, her shirt was up and off her and she made quick work on the jeans he was suddenly in. He didn’t remember putting those on…

Ignoring the small inconsistencies, he let his weight drop, feeling the warmth of her skin against his, when a sudden thought occurred to him and he nearly jumped off her if she hadn’t been holding him so tightly.

“The kids—”

Max frowned, confused. “What kids?” Her smile returned and she cupped his cheeks. “Just c’mere.”

His mind turned to complete mush as her lips met his, her hands sliding achingly slowly up his thighs. He reached between them and grabbed her wrist to guide her upwards faster, but she bit his lip and jerked her hand out of his grip with a snicker.

“Uh uh,” she breathed. “Not yet…”

“Max.” He leaned down to her throat, relishing in the warmth there.

“Fang?”

He hummed in response into her skin. She pushed on his shoulders.

“Fang!” he jerked back and looked at her, surprised by the sudden change in her tone.

-x-

Fang’s eyes fluttered and I sighed in relief when his dark irises were finally visible, staring straight at me. But they way he looked at me was strange. Like he was confused. Not necessarily like he wasn’t coherent, but like he was waking up from a dream.

“What?” he asked, looking around the room before down at himself, a hand dragging down the front of his chest.

“You were having an intense dream, I think,” I told him, holding back a laugh at the look on his face as his gaze snapped to mine.

“Dream?”

I nodded slowly, raising an eyebrow at him questioningly. “Care to share? You kept saying my name. You were kicking me.”

“Oh, jeez,” he breathed, sitting up and sliding out from behind me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Nightmare?”

“No,” he said, a little too quickly for my tastes, and I felt a little worry stir up in me.

“Fang, maybe you should relax for a bit,” Iggy said, attempting to hold back a laugh. Fang blanched as he realized probably or the first time that Iggy was on the other couch, having joined us after Fang had fallen asleep.

“Wait, what’s so funny?”

Iggy finally let out a laugh as Fang stood, body tense, and made his way towards the hallway. “I’m gonna go take a nap,” he muttered on his way out. Iggy only shook his head with a grin.

I waited for the door at the end of the hall to close before I did my best to maneuver on the couch to face Iggy. “Was he having a nightmare?”

Iggy shook his head. 

“How do you know?” I demanded.

“The way his breathing changed, his heartbeat—that was not a nightmare. For him, at least.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, wishing he could be intimidated by my looks like the other could. “Then what was it?”

Iggy gave me a wicked grin. “Can’t tell you, Max, sorry. Bro code.”

“Bro code?” I repeated incredulously.


	11. Chapter 11

Why was it so damn hot? The bed was up against the wall, and I was leaned against the window there, my cheek sucking up all the cold from the glass for as long as I could. It was nearly three in the morning and I’d woken up from a dead sleep hot as hell and extremely uncomfortable. It was a weekend, so Nudge and Angel, who’d been staying in the room with me, had fallen asleep on the floor in Ella’s room. But I was a big fan of beds these days, believe it or not…

Thankful they weren’t there, I moved slowly and quietly to lock the bedroom door before making my way back to the window, cringing a little as it scratched the windowsill as I pushed it open. But, dear lord, that winter breeze felt so nice…

The last time I had been this hot was when I got my super-speed. But this was different. Then, I’d woken up feeling like my skin was burning off. Right now, it felt like I was sitting way too close to a fire, the flames nearly licking my skin itself.

I reached over, pulled my pillow further down the bed so I could lie directly in front of the window, hoping to fall asleep.

-x-

“Max.” Someone banged on my door and I rolled over, groaning, only to squeal when my bare skin touched the ice-cold wall behind me. “Max!”

“What?” I called, my voice shaking from the cold and probably low blood sugar to be honest. A draft directed me to the open window, which I immediately closed, and I was reminded of how hot I’d been the night before. Why couldn’t my body find a happy medium?

“Breakfast,” Iggy called.

“I’ll be right down.” I flew around the room, collecting my pajamas and putting them back on, savoring the feel of the warm fleece.

“You okay?” He called, voice softer and a little concerned.

“Yeah.”

He left. Thank God. I pulled the sleeves down so that it covered my fingertips and opened the door, not wanting to feel how cold the metal would be. The door swung open and I was met with Fang as he walked towards the stairs.

“Jeez, Max,” he mumbled, wrapping his arms around himself as the cold air from my bedroom hit him. “If you need to warm up, just climb in the freezer.”

“Put come clothes on,” I snapped, smacking his bare arm. He wore nothing but a thin black short sleeve shirt, and a pair of navy flannel pajama bottoms.

He recoiled from my hit. “You’re hands are cold!”

I pulled the sleeves down again and shivered. I was cold.

As soon as the warm eggs and bacon hit the inside of my mouth, I was warm again. The hot right-off-the-stove heat burned my tongue as I shoveled more and more food into my mouth, but I could feel myself warming to a more comfortable level, though the hot flash of the previous night still concerned me.

“Why is it so cold upstairs?” Nudge asked, rubbing her arms as she joined us in the kitchen. She took a plate of food from Iggy and sat down.

“Max had the window open,” Angel said, following Nudge’s example of collecting food from Iggy and sitting at the table.

“Why did you have the window open?” Dr. Martinez scolded from across the table. “It’s the middle of December!”

I glared at Angel, receiving a lopsided grin in return. We’d have to have a talk about opinions and their importance. Mostly, how important it was to keep her opinions of my activities to herself.

“I got hot,” I mumbled with a shrug, adding more salt and pepper to my eggs. Was it a crime to be overheated in December? Maybe if the room hadn’t been 80-something degrees I wouldn’t have had to sit in front of the window nearly naked.

I heard Angel begin to choke on her eggs as she was eating and snickered to myself. Serves her right for invading on my privacy.

“You okay?” Nudge asked, eyeing Angel as her coughing turned to laughs.

“Don’t,” I hissed quietly, pointing my fork at her.

“What?” Fang and Nudge asked in unison.

“Don’t,” I said a little louder. It was one thing for her to get that little mental image, but another for her to share with the class.

Angel just shook her head and began eating again. “You owe me, Max.”

“Nope, pretty sure you still owe me, Kid.” I ignored Fang’s questioning stare and returned to my food.

-x-

“Can I talk to you really quick before you leave?” I mumbled from the doorway awkwardly as Mom stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom, pulling her hair back.  
“Sure,” she replied, putting the brush down on the dresser to wrap the tied from her wrist around the ponytail. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I defended automatically, stepping inside the room and closing the door.

“I’m sorry, Sweetie,” she laughed. “You just have this look on your face like something is wrong. What’s up then?”

I sighed and rolled up the sleeve of my shirt, revealing a fairly new scar on my forearm. “When I was taken, they replaced the chip in my arm.”

Mom frowned and stepped closer, taking my arm in her gentle fingers to examine it. “Did you find out what it was for?”

“Tracks changes in my body and stuff,” I explained quickly. “Which doesn’t sound all that bad but—”

“It could be sending them information, essentially becoming a GPS for you,” Mom nodded, understanding quickly. “Do the others have these chips?”

I shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea. I just want it out.”

Mom nodded again and pulled her coat out of the closet. “I’ll look into it when I get home and we can see about having them removed.” She paused, hesitating, and I watched as she grew a little more apprehensive. “Max, I wanted to talk to you about something. Something I’ve been thinking about for a little while now.”

“What’s wrong? “I asked, trying not to sound demanding, but her tone was doing nothing to comfort me. Were we about to be kicked out?

“This three bedroom house was nice for Ella and I, but I feel like in a bigger place, with more yard and space, the rest of you guys would be a little more comfortable,” she explained, standing in front of me. “I was thinking of selling the house and we can find something bigger.”

My mind went blank. What? An adult wanted to do something nice for us? Something like buy a house? “I can’t ask you to do that,” I sputtered quickly. “Really, we’re fine here. We love it here.” A new though plagued my brain then. “Are we making you and Ella uncomfortable?”

“No, no,” Mom interjected quickly. “It’s nothing like that. I found a five bedroom home a little ways outside of the city. A lot more secluded, lots of trees across the street, huge front yard. It’s just under seven hundred, but it should be plenty of space for everyone. We can always turn the evtra living room into a sixth bedroom if—”

“Mom, no,” I gasped, the pieces of what she was telling me finally clicking into place in my brain in a single moment of understanding. “That’s way too much money and I can’t ask you to do this—”

“You’re not asking me,” she whispered, a sad smile on her face now as she took my face in her hands. “I’m asking you. Max, when I helped Jeb with the recombinant DNA project, I was well compensated. I haven’t touched that money for various reasons, and even taking out Ella’s college, there is more than enough for this house.”

My heart raced over this, pounding loudly in my ears. “Why are you asking me?”

“I had never planned to use that money outside of Ella’s education—and yours, too, if you’d like it. Any of you,” she started slowly. “But when I met you I knew I would never use that money, money they paid me to keep quiet about what we’d created, and what it did to you. I want to use that money for you now. To help you.”

I jerked forward and wrapped my arms around her waist, swallowing hard. “Thank you,” was all I could manage. I pulled away and smiled up at her. “You’ve never needed to use that money? You just stashed it all away?”

“I never did it for the money,” she admitted. “And I make pretty good money doing what I do.” She glanced at her watch. “Speaking of which…We’ll talk about the chip more when I get home.”

She leaned forward and planted a quick kiss to my forehead. “You have no idea how grateful we all are to what you’re doing for us,” I murmured, pulling her in for a hug again. “Thank you. For everything. Even if it could end up…”

Her arms tightened around me. “Don’t worry about any of that, alright, Max? Ella and I are capable of handling ourselves.”

-x-

And so I waited. And waited. And waited…

Do you know how boring it can get when you’re stuck at home while your little half-sister is at school and your mom is at work? Fang and Gazzy had discovered Ella’s ancient PlayStation in the basement and were absorbed entirely in that—thank god, because Fang still looked like death. Nudge and Angel were watching old Disney movies on the only other TV—the classics, Ella had called them. 

I got up from my chair in the kitchen—I had dubbed it “Max’s Thinking Chair”—and headed for the front door when I bumped into Iggy.

“Where’re you headed?” I asked.

“Lunch.”

“How long ‘til it’s ready?” I asked, really wanting to go for a fly. Sitting indoors for the last few days was making me jittery and I was getting hot again, that fever-like warmth spreading through me slowly, growing.

“’Bout a half an hour. Why? Where are you headed?” He walked around me and opened the fridge, gently feeling around for what he needed. Ella had labeled the important, common things with different combinations of colored tape so he could find what he needed quicker.

I pulled on my sneakers and a light sweater. “I’m going for a quick fly. I’ll try to be back for lunch.”

-x-

Let’s just say that the cold air in my face felt so good that I didn’t make it back for lunch. Or dinner. Or bedtime.

But I did make it back. And the minute my feet touched the ground in front of the house, I felt terrible. I immediately knew exactly how stupid that had been, that I was supposed to be waiting for Mom to get home from work to talk about the very-important-chip situation. And also because I’d recently been sprung from The School, so there was that unnecessary worry I probably put everyone through.

But damn, the chilly air was like heaven and the pounding headache made it hard to think straight at all. And right now, all I could think about was the inevitable embarrassment of an explanation I’d face in the morning, not just with Mom but the rest of the Flock.

The house was dark and silent, and I almost felt a little suspicious that no one was awake for me. Maybe I hadn’t worried them as much as I thought? And suddenly I didn’t know which I feared more, being forgotten or having my Flock become so complacent they didn’t worry when I didn’t come back.

Luck on my side for once, my window was still unlocked from the night before, and slid open easily. After climbing in, I immediately made my way out into the hall, quietly peeking into the girls’ room to see them all asleep. Satisfied that they very clearly weren’t out looking for me, I headed down the stairs as quietly as I could to put my sweater in the hall closet and my shoes by the door, planning on grabbing a quick sandwich before going to bed myself.

“I swear, if you get pneumonia, I’m going to kill you. What were you thinking?” a voice hissed behind me, making me jump. I spun around, fist flying out to punch anyone behind me, but Fang caught it, close and towering over me. 

He must have been waiting up. He was in a pair of pajama pants and no shirt.

“Jeez!” I growled, pushing him gently away from me so that I could walk down the narrow hallway towards the stairs. “You scared the crap outta me!”

“You scared the crap out of us!” Fang followed me up the stairs. “Where the hell did you go for ten hours?” His hand pushed the door back open when I attempted to slam it in his face. “Do you know how hard it was to keep everyone here? As much as it kills me, I couldn’t go look for you. It’s not safe, Max.” I rolled my eyes and stepped away from the door, heading to sit on the bed. “If you hadn’t come back by morning, Iggy was going to take Gazzy and Angel and go find you.”

“If you must know, I just went for a fly.”

“Just?” Fang angrily jerked a hand through his hair, clearly seething. He turned and shut the door quietly before turning back to me, hand pinching the bridge of his nose. “Max, we just got you back, you can’t do shit like this.”

“Why are you treating me like this?” I demanded quietly, aware that the others were sleeping a room over. “I’m not one of the kids, I told Iggy where I was going—”

“You told him you’d be back by lunch,” he threw back. “Max, please be rational and see how it looks. If any of the others had done what you did today, you would have gone and dragged their ass home.”

“I’m sorry,” I ground out, looking up at him and wishing he would leave so I could stew in my own embarrassment and go to sleep. “You don’t think I know I royally messed up? But I’m okay, I’m fine.”

Fang walked over and sat next to me on the bed, our thighs bumping. “Where did you go?” he asked softer, “for ten hours?”

“I got hot again,” I said simply with a shrug like it was nothing and absolutely had been concerning me for the last 5 hours…

“Max, this isn’t good,” he sighed, but stopped when I yawned. “We’ll talk more in the morning, I guess.”

“Sure,” I mumbled, watching as he walked out of the room and shut the door behind him. I’d have to ask Angel for a little favor. Fang didn’t need to know that for three of those ten hours I’d been flying around completely nude…


	12. Chapter 12

I knew that I was going to have a bad day as soon as I woke up. Hot. That’s how I woke up. Burning hot and sticky and just gross. But it was later than the past nights. I had been waking up at two—three in the morning. But today, I woke up when Iggy called for breakfast at nine.

“Yo, Max! I’m getting a little tired of waking you up every morning,” he joked, but there was a sting to his tone that I didn’t need enhanced hearing to catch. Yup. The Flock was pissed. I jerked the door out of my way and glared at Iggy, flicking him in the forehead so that he knew I was awake. “Breakfast in ten. Glad to see you found your way home and didn’t get captured by the School again.”

I grunted a quick apology and headed down the hall towards the girls’ room. Angel was sitting cross-legged on her bed, grinning up at me. I leaned against the doorway with my arms crossed. Angel immediately jumped up to her knees on the bed and held up a hand at me. 

“No, what you’re about to ask me—no.”

Nudge and Ella just looked between me and Angel, both frowning.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “What I did was incredibly stupid and just…stupid. I’m sorry I made you all worry.”

“Apologize to Mom and Fang,” Ella commented with a wave of her hand. “I wasn’t sure who was going to have a stroke first.”

“I’m just glad your home,” Nudge grinned, crossing her legs beneath her. “And I accept your apology. Please buddy up next time.”

“Will do.” I turned back to Angel. “Please? Help?”

“No, Max,” Angel shook her head, face turning serious. “Think of this as punishment. You can’t hide it forever. There’s something wrong.”

“If you’re getting this uncomfortably hot, maybe you should have Mom look you over,” Ella suggested.

“Sure, when she removes the chip, I’ll have her do that. But you need to get Fang to forget—” She stood up and headed for the door, a devious little grin on her face.

“No can do, Max. I love you, but it gets boring around here.”

I was going to smack her. I was going to murder this little child. Age nine and already manipulative. Where did she learn that? Certainly not from me…

I rubbed my temples and sighed after Angel left the room, then looked back up at the other two. “I really am sorry. I just lost track of time…”

“Just let us know next time?” Nudge pleaded gently, pressing her palms together. “I’ll go with you. Just ask.”

I nodded and moved to leave, glancing down the hallway to see that no, Iggy did not wake up any of the boys.

“Gazzy,” I pounded on his door. “Up and at ‘em. Breakfast time.” I paused outside of Fang’s room, hand hovering above the knob. My heart thrummed loudly in my chest and time slowed down when I heard the doorknob twist, an audible creak echoing in the hall.

I took a step backwards to leave, but heard myself say, “Breakfast time,” instead.

Fang caught my wrist and just stared at me and I felt a shiver ripple down my spine. I was fretting over what would happen, but unsure of why. I was their fearless leader who had kicked Eraser ass many times. I’ve been experimented on, beaten up, and in more pain than anyone can imagine, but one of the only things that scared me was…the wrath of Fang? Oh yeah, remember how I said I was getting soft over the years?

Right.

His face was completely impassive, but the muscles in his arms were tensed. And what did the fearless leader of the flock, the Maximum Ride do in this simplistic situation? I nodded and headed for the stairs, gently pulling my wrist out of his grip.

“After breakfast…” Fang mumbled behind me.

“What about it?”

“Max, you and I both know there’s something wrong.” He pulled my arm again and spun me around to face him. “Hell, Angel knows it. And after you pulled that stunt yesterday, everyone else in this house knows it.”

“Alright!” I snapped in a whisper. I headed for the stairs muttering, “We can all sit in a circle and share our feelings.” Fang sighed behind me.

\--x--

Let’s just say that sharing our feelings would have been better than what went down. Chaos. Total chaos. And it even started before breakfast. As soon as I set foot into the kitchen, I swear I heard a ding-ding-ding! sound for some boxing fight.

Mom was out of her chair and around the table too quick for me to react. “Where did you go yesterday?”

“Out,” I muttered, taking food from the counter. I loved my Mom, and I was glad I had found her and all that jazz, but I was not okay with answering to her as my parent. Following orders, answering to authority? Never been my style, sorry.

“Do you know how worried everyone was?” She walked around the table and stood in front of me, her hands crossed over her chest.

“Since when have you started acting all motherly? You’ve let us live in trees for the last three years or so. And cages before that.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, a defense mechanism to the embarrassment and horror of being called out and scolded in front of my Flock.

“Since you came home,” she said easily, clearly unaffected by my words.

“Where’d you go, anyways?” Iggy asked the question that, everyone had asked me since I’d woken up.

“North.” Geez, they were going to make me admit it…

“Why North?” Nudge asked, taking her plate to the sink. I looked around at the curious faces staring at me. Dr. Martinez, Angel, and the Gasman sitting at the table, Fang leaning against the doorway, food in hand. Nudge and Iggy were staring at me from the sink.

Way to put the pressure on me. They were going to make me admit it, and it really wasn’t even that big of a deal anyways…

I shrugged like it should have been obvious. “It’s colder up North in winter than it is here.” I glanced across the faces staring back at me, all expectant, waiting for me to elaborate.

Fang only stood in front of me, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes wordlessly telling me to move on.

I looked at Mom and tried not to sound like I was begging when I asked, “Can you take the chip out, and I’ll tell you the rest later?”

-x-

Fang and Iggy had come along, standing off to the side as Mom worked, taking quick x-rays to get a better idea of how to proceed. She’d gone ahead and scanned both Fang and Iggy, but found no chip in either of them.

“Well, you know, I’m not surprised,” I’d mumbled. “The whitecoats have more or less written the rest of you off…”

“What makes you think that?” Mom asked, prepping a few tools on a tray sitting on the counter along the wall.

“There was this panel, like a board,” I explained briefly. “They talked about how only Iggy or Fang were needed for breeding purposes. At least that’s how they made it sound.”

Mom nodded slowly. “I still want to x-ray the other three, just to be sure, but it’s no rush since the boys here don’t seem to have a chip.” She spun around the the tray in her hands and motioned for me to lie back as she took her seat next to me. “Now, tell me what happened yesterday.”

I pursed my lips as I adjusted into the chair, letting Mom take my arm and twist it to get better access to the new scar. I was really uncomfortable doing this in front of Fang and Iggy, and really wished neither had come with us. “So I’d get really hot. So hot that it was almost painful. I went north so that it would be more comfortable.”

“How far north, exactly?” Mom dared to ask, pausing in her movements of wiping my arm down with antiseptic.

“Uhm,” I started slowly, knowing exactly how this bomb would break. “Last sign I saw was for Winnipeg…”

“Canada,” Fang stated in audible disbelief, which was a little rare for him. “You flew all the way up to Canada.”

“Max, that has to be like 2000 miles,” Mom gasped, hands freezing in their motions.

“Pretty sure I broke my speed record,” I whispered down at my lap, playing with the edge of my shirt with my other hand. “Think I broke 400 for a while.”

“You should give her a physical,” Fang spoke quietly. “Make sure it’s not just in her head.”

“Then again,” Iggy started, “this is how she got her super speed in the first place, right? Maybe it’s just a growth spurt of sorts.”

Mom nodded in agreement. “Could be.”

“I’d still feel better if she got a physical,” Fang muttered.

“Not happened,” I ground out to him over my shoulder. “We don’t know anyone who would…just no.”

“Alright,” Mom intervened. “Relax and we’ll get started.”

As much as I didn’t want to bring it up, I felt like I had to. Iggy was there and there was absolutely no way I was going to embarrass myself in front of another flock member. “No valium,” I said quietly, glancing at Fang. The corner of his lips twitched and he moved to stand near my feet. 

“Why not?” he asked, a smile in his voice. I just scowled at him.

“Is there something else you can use?” I asked, hopeful.

“Possibly. Because your arm was recently operated on, it would probably be safer to knock you out completely, but we don’t have that option. I can try some other medications, but none that would work as well as valium.”

I sat in silence for a second as she let me weigh my options. Valium, or no medication at all. Valium, or—

“Max, just take the stupid valium, you’re not doing this without some kind of medication,” Iggy groaned. “Don’t put yourself through that torture just to avoid twenty minutes of embarrassment.”

“Oh?” I challenged. “Is that all it would be? Because I’m pretty sure you’d drag it out a lot longer than that…”

“Max,” Fang warned and I just rolled my head to the side to look helplessly at Mom, who only pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“Fine,” I sighed dramatically. “Drug me.”


	13. Chapter 13

Fang wouldn’t lie, he was a little excited that Max had caved and would be on valium again. He knew Iggy would get a kick out of it. Drug-induced Max was a very interesting Max to talk to. And it didn’t take her long to start.

“You feel okay?” Dr. Martinez asked.

“Super,” Max drawled quietly, sinking into the chair.

“Alright, I’m going to go ahead and start,” she murmured, leaning over Max’s arm that was strapped down to the chair.

“She’s not going to feel it, right?” Iggy asked anxiously, his fingertips brushing Fang’s arm.

“She’s fine,” he whispered to Iggy. “Listen.” Fang held back a chuckle.

“Fang,” Max sighed, tilting her head to look at him. Iggy started to laugh, but Fang elbowed him in the side.

“Dude,” Fang whispered to him, then to Max, “I’m here.”

She sighed and looked down at what her mother was doing. “I wish you weren’t. You should be at home with everyone else. This is soo embarrassing.”

Iggy choked back a laugh. “Is that what I was listening for?” He whispered.

I hit him upside the head.

Fang glanced at the operation. Dr. Martinez had a grin on her face and she was leaned over Max’s arm, working carefully with a scalpel to move tissue and muscles out of the way to reach the chip. “You guys are walking a very thin line,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Maybe you two should wait in the lobby.”

“Mom,” Max continued, her voice slurred and slow.

“Yes, Sweetie.”

“I love him.”

Iggy started laughing again. “We know.”

She pointed at Iggy with her free hand. “Shh. No one said you could date my sister, so shh. Peanut gallery.”

Dr. Martinez glanced up at Iggy, who was a little surprised and Fang let out a laugh that time.

“Man,” Iggy said in disbelief. “Did she do this last time, too?”

“Oh yeah,” Fang replied.

“I remember that,” Dr. Martinez mumbled. “She loves you this much.”

“Oh, jeez,” Iggy rubbed his eyes.

“More ‘n that,” Max muttered. “Love ‘im more ‘n that.”

“How much?” Fang asked her.

“Tons,” she replied, then yawned. Her face changed suddenly, she started blinking rapidly and looking around at herself.

“What’s this?” Dr. Martinez murmured to herself, poking at the machine to her right that was keeping track of Max’s vitals. She immediately switched gears and picked up the needle and thread on the tray, making quick work of stitching together the dime-sized hole in Max’s forearm. 

“What’s wrong?” Fang asked flatly, trying to keep his calm façade perfect. Panicking didn’t help any situation.

“Her temperature just jumped and her heart rate is fluctuating wildly.” She scurried around the room, searching for gauze to wrap around Max’s arm. “Something is very wrong.”

Fang placed his hand on Max’s forehead and jerked back immediately in surprise, before pulling Iggy’s hand towards Max’s cheek.

“That’s…outrageous,” Iggy murmured. “Max?” All he received was a groan in response.

“I think she’s passing out,” Fang murmured, bending over Max’s limp form and taking her face in his hands. “C’mon, Max, I need you to look at me. Talk to me.”

Dr. Martinez reached out and pressed the back of her hand to Max’s forehead. “The machines aren’t wrong. Go get ice! Break room has a freezer—at the end of the hall where we came in,” she commanded and Fang ran off.

When he got back after fumbling through the freezer for ice to throw in some gallon sized bags that were sitting on the counter, Dr. Martinez had ripped out every wire that had been connected to Max. He began to strategically place bags of ice and icepacks on Max, murmuring to her to try and get her to come around.

“Where’d Iggy go?” Fang asked, looking around the room for him.

“He’s flying home to run an ice bath for her. None of the tubs here are big enough. We need to get her home.” She sounded almost apologetic. It wasn’t her fault that a vet can’t always accommodate and Avian-human. It wasn’t her fault we couldn’t just take her to a hospital.

Fang pulled a thin sheet off a shelf behind him, it being the only thing he could find, and he wrapped Max’s body and the ice up in it as carefully as he could. He brushed the back of her neck when he went to pick her up and found that she had cooled down some—which was a little comforting.

Fang wasted no time scooping her up and quickly making his way out of the clinic and towards the car parked out back. Dr. Martinez raced around, opening the backdoor for him to slide in with her, before shutting the door and jumping in the driver’s seat.

“Fang,” Max sighed, and he looked down at her, cupping her face in his free hand.

“I’m right here,” he murmured. “Max?” He patted her cheek a few times as the car took off out of the parking lot and down the road back to the house.

“Five minutes,” Dr. Martinez called back to him. “Is her temperature lowering?”

Fang put his hand to her forehead. “Some, she’s still warm.”

Dr. Martinez cranked up the air conditioning and Fang leaned back to adjust the vents near them towards her. After what felt like forever and the longest red light he had ever sat through thanks to the cop stopped next to them, Fang raced into the house with Max unconscious in his arms past the Flock and up the stairs.

In the bathroom, Iggy had run the water as cold as he could and put every bit of ice and every icepack he could find in the water.

“Alright, Max,” Fang grunted as he swung one leg over the edge of the tub and tried to gently lay her down in the water, clothing and all. Her body let out an involuntary shudder, a gasp escaping her lips as she submerged. Fang sat on the edge of the tub, hovering over her, and checked her temperature again. “Do you have a therm—”

Dr. Martinez appeared next to him on her knees, tilting Max’s face towards her to stick the digital thermometer under her tongue. Max’s face lost is red warmth, and she felt better. Much, much better.

The thermometer let out a shrill beep and Dr. Martinez plucked it out of Max’s mouth and checked it, a relieved sigh escaping her. “Normal range now. Disaster averted. She still has a slight fever, but she’s not about to have her organs shutting down.”

 

For now, Fang though, wondering grimly how long until the next episode.

-x-

I was suddenly aware. It was different from waking up. It was like you just all of a sudden popped into existence. Like you wake up from a dreamless sleep that’s only left you tired.

I felt someone’s hand, ice cold, brushing my cheek and I immediately flinched away from it.

“You really awake this time?” a male voice asked.

I pried my eyes open to be met with Iggy’s sightless blue ones.

“Yeah,” I croaked and he handed me a glass of ice water, which I sat up and downed in record time. I was in the room I shared with the girls, it was dark out, which concerned me a bit.

“Fang and I have a bet and since I really wanna win, I’m gonna to play dirty,” Iggy started, getting my attention.

I held up my hand to halt him for a second while I swallowed. “Is this anything that he’ll kill you for?”

“Possibly, probably, and most definitely, but he’s played dirty, too.” He shrugged.

I quirked an eyebrow and, as if sensing my confusion, he elaborated without me even asking him to do so.

“Let’s just say that Nudge stabbed me with a fork…”

“I don’t wanna know,” I muttered. If there was something Iggy had done to make Nudge stab him, I didn’t want to know. At all. “Why am I in here?”

Iggy frowned. “You don’t remember earlier today? Dr. Martinez was removing the chip in your arm. Things went south really fast, just as she was finishing. We had to rush you home and throw you in an ice bath just to cool your body down to a safer temperature.”

“Huh,” I frowned. “I don’t remember any of that. I remember talking before the procedure a little then just kind of…nothing…”

Iggy grinned like mad. “Oh, Boy, I’m about to win this bet.”

“Iggy,” I said, about to warn him. The bets he and Fng got into always led to trouble. Always.

“Well, Fang was egging you on while you were drugged out,” he blurted. “While Dr. Martinez was operating, Fang got you to talk to him. Even knowing how wrong it was.”

My face heated up. Embarrassment and anger surged through me like lightning. Someone was about to die…Fang knew how I felt about being on the valium. Regret surged through me at not having demanded the boys leave the room before the procedure…


	14. Chapter 14

I wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to punish Fang for the blatant breach of trust, but that in itself ended up being a pretty good punishment. I’d immediately left Iggy when he told me he’d made some food and that it was down in the kitchen waiting for me, the others were finishing up.

Fang saw me first when I entered the kitchen, but I quickly continued scanning the others, doing a mental head count of my Flock.

“Are you alright?” he immediately asked, standing.

I ignored him and headed for the counter where a plate of sandwiches sat waiting for me beneath clear plastic wrap.

Mom was at my side, brushing hair away from my forehead. “Are you alright?”

I looked up at her and nodded, taking a bite. “I’m alright I think. Iggy filled me in on what happened.” I shot Fang a quick, pointed look in my peripheral that I know he saw.

Mom put her hand to my forehead as I chomped down on my sandwich. “You feel normal now, but let me know if it starts flaring up again, alright? That temperature can have some bad consequences if left unattended. Organ failure, organ death, sterilization—just keep me in the loop, alright?”

I nodded, flicking Nudge’s ponytail as she walked past me to put her plate in the sink. “Have you talked to the others yet?”

Mom’s eyebrows dropped. “About what?”

“The house,” I said slowly, relieved when a smile broke out on her face.

“Oh, no, I thought you and I could go look at it first,” she said. “I want you to make sure you think you guys would be safe there. I can always keep looking, but I have to say, it’s really nice.”

“What house?” Fang asked behind us, but I made a point of keeping my eyes away from him.

“Are we moving?” Nudge asked after a second, a little excitement on her face.

“Maybe,” I told her. “Mom was telling me she found a bigger house across town. Lots more room for you guys, a little more privacy in the yards.”

“Oh my god, that would be awesome,” she gushed. “Can we take off from the yard? Because we can’t really go flying in broad daylight here, not without—”

“Maybe,” I interrupted. “I do want to check it out, like Mom suggested.”

“It’s Sunday, so we could probably go poke around the outside later today if you guys wanted.”

“It looks nice,” Angel piped in from the table next to Fang. She tapped her head once and gestured to Mom when she saw the confused looked I was sending her. 

Nudge jumped up and down n her toes, asking Mom all kinds of questions about the house and if she could come with us to go see it. I glanced back over my shoulder, starting on a second sandwich, and glared at Fang, who was listening to Nudge and Mom, his plate and cup empty in front of him.

“Oh yeah,” I heard Angel tell him. “She’s pissed. You can stop wondering.”

Fang stood abruptly and moved to put his plate and cup in the sink before swiftly leaving the kitchen altogether. Good.

“Max, you’re gaining weight,” Nudge commented. She reached past me and pulled at my wrist, my hand subconsciously gripping the counter with white knuckles.

“Gee, thanks Nudge,” I muttered sarcastically around my sandwich. “You’re too kind.”

“No, I mean, when we found you at the School, you were so skinny,” she amended. 

“Oh, yeah, nearly a year on an IV diet can do that, I guess,” I commented flippantly, finishing the last bite of my second sandwich and reaching for a third.

Mom sighed and tucked some of my hair behind my ear. “Finish eating, shower, we’ll head over to the house whenever you’re ready.”

“Sounds good.”

“Is this an open invitation?” Nudge asked, looking at me with wide, pleading eyes. I glanced over at Angel, who was smirking down at her own food.

“Let’s just make it a girls’ trip,” I suggested, grabbing another sandwich and heading for the stairs.

“Gazzy is gonna be so bummed,” Angel sighed mockingly.

“Oh, I’ll bet,” I said with a wink.

I finished my food, showered and dressed before peeking into the boys’ room and letting Iggy and Gazzy know we were headed out for a little while. Fang was there, too, but I could see his jaw clench when I addressed Iggy and Gasman specifically.

The house itself was huge, and I expected nothing less from a house with five bedrooms. We couldn’t go in without the realtor, mom explained, but since no one was living in it, she figured it would be okay to poke around the outside.

Like she’d said, the area across the street from the house was heavily wooded, which could act as protection for both us and anyone after us, but I put it in my mental Pros column anyways since it would be easy to lose attackers in the woods than worrying about being attacked from it.

Nudge and Angel were more interested in the balconies coming off two of the bedrooms in the back and the huge pool below in the backyard.

“Oh my god, we could totally jump from the balcony into the pool,” Nudge was saying, looking between the two.

“Uhm.” I peeked over the edge of the pool, which was empty since it was still only the beginning of winter. “This is really not deep enough for that,” I told her, watching her face fall. “But I’m sure you will totally have fun anyways.”

Angel pushed her wings through the slits in her coat and flew up to one of the balconies, causing Mom to jump a little.

“Please be careful,” she called up. “I’m not sure what kind of security alarms this place has.”

“These rooms are huge,” Angel called back. “There are five of these?”

“Mom gets the master bedroom, of course,” I told her. “But the rest are ours to divvy up.”

“There are two living rooms and a den, along with a kitchen and dining room on the first floor,” Mom read off the pamphlet she’d taken from the plastic container on the For Sale sign when we’d arrived. “And then there’s an open basement. We can always turn a room or two on the first floor into another bedroom.”

Mom flipped over the paper and I spotted floor plans for the three levels. The master bedroom looked like it was at one end of the house, two bedrooms faced the back, two faced the front. The two in the front were smaller by a bit, and didn’t have the balconies that the back two had. The house itself didn’t have a garage like other similar houses on the street had.

“Whoever bought the house when it was being built probably requested to turn it into another room,” Mom explained when I’d mentioned it.

“Our gain,” I murmured, leaning over. “It’s the only room on the first floor with a proper door. We can stick two in there as a bedroom.” Mom nodded. “Have to be bird kids though, I wouldn’t feel comfortable sticking Ella down there away from everyone else in case someone got in at night.

“I agree,” Mom mumbled. She looked up at me with a grin. “So you like it?”

Angel hopped off the edge of the balcony and landed in front of us, Nudge joining on my other side.

“We like it,” Angel declared, glancing at Nudge.

I glanced around. Woods in front of us, a spacious backyard that was backed up against another thick string of woods. Our neighbors weren’t nonexistent, but you couldn’t see their houses through the trees that lines the property. It was perfect.

“Alright, I’ll call the realtor in the morning and see what I can do,” Mom said, gesturing for us to head back to the car.

-x-

Angel and Nudge immediately bounced into the house to start telling the boys about the new house. I passed them wordlessly, making the very conscious decision to ignore Fang, whose eyes I felt on me the whole way.

I followed Mom into the kitchen where Ella was at the kitchen table doing homework, Iggy at the stove already at work on dinner.

“Was it nice?” Ella asked with a grin.

“Oh yeah,” I told her, sitting down. “There two rooms in the back have balconies. There’s a pool. We didn’t get to go inside, but from the windows it looked really nice inside.”

“You can come when I do the tour of the inside with the realtor,” Mom said, leaning down to kiss her on the top of her head. She dropped the pamphlet in front of Ella.

“So who gets what room?” she asked, flipping it over and seeing the floor plan.

I pulled my legs underneath me and leaned across the table. “That’s Mom’s,” I said, pointing to the biggest bedroom with the bathroom off it. “These two I was thinking were yours and mine, I was thinking of sticking Fang in this one and Iggy and Gazzy can share this one.”

“Hey, why do I have to share a room with the Gasman?” Iggy asked, turning around to face the table.

“Because it’s a new environment and you can’t see,” I told him. “Also, we’re short on rooms. I’d rather double up the bird kids than have male-female pairs.”

“I will veto that,” Mom piped in, raising her hand. I pressed my lips together and gestured to Mom, even though Iggy couldn’t see me. He shrugged one shoulder in defeat and turned back to the pot in front of him.

“Where are Nudge and Angel?” Ella asked.

I slid my finger down the page to one of the big living rooms. “This room will be theirs. Plenty big enough for them, and it still has a door.”

Ella looked up at Mom. “I can stay at the high school though, right? Or would I have to switch?”

“I think I can appeal to let you finish out your last semester here at least,” she mused. “It’s one semester, you’ll live if you have to switch, though. You’ll be moving for college soon anyways.”

“Sounds good,” Ella murmured with a nod. “I look forward to seeing it in person. And finishing this calc homework.”

“Ew.” I sat back in my chair properly with a laugh. “Can’t help you there.” I looked over at Iggy. “Let me know if you need any help.”

“Ew,” he mocked. “You can’t help me here.”

-x-

It wasn’t until dinner that I said anything to him. I sat there, fork in one hand, dinner roll in the other, glaring daggers at him. I chewed slowly and I swore I saw him blush two or three times, but it was hard to tell when he wouldn’t look at me anymore. Not when he knew I was staring at him.

Nudge and Angel continued to talk about the house and all the shenanigans they thought Gazzy would get into, creating rules like “No explosives near the pool.” But I and Fang both remained silent.

Finally, after a few minutes of awkward silence fell over the entire table, the only sounds being forks on plates, Fang sat up straight in his chair. “Would it help if I said I was sorry?” he said quietly across from me. “You started talking first anyways—ask Iggy.”

“Dude,” Iggy said quickly before I could say anything. “Don’t pull me into this.”

“What, you scared?” Nudge teased.

“Of you and that fork? Yes. Of Max, hell yes. Of Fang?” Iggy only shrugged and I had a feeling that a testosterone fueled brawled would begin after dinner.

“Max, I—” Fang started.

“Don’t,” I snapped, “say anything to me right now. What you did was an invasion of trust, not to mention rude. You knew how I felt and you still egged it on.”

“Angel does it every day. She invades everyone’s privacy all the time,” Gazzy shrugged. I threw him a look and he immediately hunched over his plate and hurried to finish. So the rest of the flock knew, too.

“I don’t tell other people things I hear unless absolutely necessary or funny,” she grinned.

“And unlike you,” I said, glaring at Fang. “She knows when it’s appropriate.”

“I don’t think that was the best word to describe what you meant,” Angel smiled. “Try, I know when it’s a blatant disregard for the feelings of others.”

“I’m sorry,” he tried again. “Come on, it wasn’t that bad and it’s not anything that’s really a secret here.”

“Just,” I sighed, taking my plate to the sink. “No.”

“Alright,” Mom tried to intervene. “Let’s finish up and clean up the table. Ella, you need to finish your homework. I think everyone can use their space for a little while.”

Immediately Gazzy jumped up and stacked his plate on Iggy’s empty one and took both to the sink, Nudge moving to put things back in the fridge.

“Max,” Fang called as I tried to leave the kitchen. I stopped and glanced over my shoulder at him, staying put when I saw the look on his face. “I know this has happened before, and you also talk in your sleep sometimes, so I’m sure the rest of the Flock has experienced you like that before. But like I said, you didn’t say anything I don’t already know, right? I love you, and I’m fairly certain everyone here knows this. Above all, I’m pretty sure you do. And if you don’t, this is me embarrassing myself and telling you now.” I watched his face gain a red tinge in his cheeks and fought the urge to flee. “I’m sorry I upset you and embarrassed you, but I’m pretty sure now we’re even…”

A silence befell the room and I actually turned to stare him.

“Dude,” Iggy said finally. “That was—”

“An entire paragraph!” the Gasman exclaimed. Even Mom seemed a little surprised. Nudge and Ella’s jaws were dropped, but Angel was looking around at everyone’s shocked faces.

Angel laughed. “You don’t hear the things he thinks in his mind, it’s like a book.” Fang kicked her under the table. “What? I think you hit the nail on the head that we all knew.”

“You’re different, Angel,” Nudge said, crossing her arms. “You know everything everyone thinks.”

I just continued to walk down the hall, my mind blank. I didn’t know what to think. One thing he said was for sure, that hadn’t been easy for him, and we were probably even on the embarrassment front—to a point. But he didn’t need to say all that in front of everyone, Mom and Ella included. I closed the bedroom door behind me, hit by a new, refreshed wave of embarrassment.

-x-

I sat on the bed, my head against the wall. I watched the late sun setting, the lines the light drew on the wall moving in different directions by the second.

How could Fang do that to me? He knew why I was against valium. He knew, yet he thought it would be funny to…or did he? Did he really think it was funny? Or was he just trying to learn the truth? I scratched my head and groaned. I knew the most about Fang, but I didn’t know the answer to this and that’s what bugged me the most. He said he loved me, and I was sure I’d said it to him before, but he clearly meant it differently this time…

A knock on my bedroom door pulled me from my thoughts and before I even answered it I knew who it was.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” I told Fang, but he brushed past me anyways.

“Too bad,” he muttered, closing the door from over my shoulder. “We need to talk about this.”

“About what?” I asked flippantly. “How you keep messing with my head and I let you get away with it every time?” I started ticking off on my hand. “Trying to kiss me when we were kids even though I asked you not to, leaving me not once but twice—the second time even after promising—”

“Max,” he said sternly, glaring. “Please. Please just listen.”

“Alright,” I sighed loudly, moving across the room to sit cross-legged on the bed. “Proceed.”

“You know how the other night you were telling me to stop harping on you when you knew you had royally messed up?”

“I remember,” I confirmed unhappily.

“That is me now, alright? I know. I get it. We should have left the room.”

“So why didn’t you?” I challenged. “You knew how I felt about it, you knew what was going to happen. Why didn’t you take the initiative to leave? I mean, that’s actually one of your specialties…”

Fang’s face smoothed out and I recognized the poker face. He took a second to himself before he frowned and sat next to me on the bed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands tiredly. “Because seeing you there like that, it reminded me of the School and I just…I got carried away when you started to talk…”

I pressed my lips together. “Sometimes I forget it’s only been like two weeks since you broke me out.”

He picked up one of my wrists and examined it like Nudge had. “You’ve been looking healthier lately.”

I nodded and poked his cheek. “You, too, Mr. Bird Flu.”

“It’s taking me too long to feel completely better,” he muttered, turning to face me. “Still tired way too often, too easily.”

“You sure that’s from being sick and not just because you’re out of shape?” I teased. I blinked and suddenly I was lying on my back, Fang hovering over me. My arms were pinned next to me, and Fang had a devilish grin on his face.

“Who’s out of shape?”

Do it, a voice in my head whispered. And I wanted to. So I did. And it surprised him just as much as the thought of doing it had surprised me. But he reacted quickly, his lips responding to mine almost as soon as they touched.

His hands moved off my wrists, one moving to tangle in my hair, the other moving to my waist. It was fast, moving too fast, and suddenly I felt like I was shrinking back into myself, falling back on old habits as I pushed Fang off me and quickly made my way to the door, not listening to see if he was following.

Mom was still down in the kitchen, helping Ella with something in a book. “I’m going to fly to the lake and back,” I explained breathlessly in a rush, gesturing weakly over my shoulder. “Promise I’ll be back in less than an hour. I just need to get out for a bit.”

“Are you alright?” Mom asked, moving to stand. “Yeah, I’m fine, no fever. Just…need air.”

“Alright,” she said with a slow nod. “Back in an hour. I’m counting.”

I quickly made my way into the foyer, pulling on a coat and shoes before taking off from the porch, my body feeling hot for a whole different reason this time…


	15. Chapter 15

I flew straight to the lake across town, circling above it slowly as I beat myself for running again. Geez, almost 18—a legal adult, and I still couldn’t handle the intimate situations Fang and I sometimes found ourselves in. Why was I so afraid? What was I so afraid of?

I knew the answer. I just didn’t want to think it. Most girls are afraid their soulmates would leave them one day.

Mine already had once…

I coasted around the edge of the lake before deciding to land on the edge for a short break before I headed home. It’d only been about half an hour since I’d left, but I really felt like a long talk with Fang was way overdue.

As soon as my feet hit the ground, an explosion occurred in my mind. It was different from any of the other times I’d had a brain explosion. No, this was different. My entire body ached and throbbed in tune with my head. Images flashed before my mind; terrible scenes of fires, explosions, death. Then it stopped.

I paused, not moving from my fetal position on the ground. Very, very slowly, my hands loosened and disentangled from my hair. Barely breathing, I slowly sat up straight.

“No,” I whispered, shooting up to my feet.

The deep navy night sky that had been hanging above my head a few minutes ago was ablaze with orange and red lights along the horizon. And I was no longer in the field by the lake edge. I was now in the center of an unkempt cemetery. The trees that surrounded the cemetery were scorched and charred, a fire raging across the flat land a far distance away, all around me. Dust drifted through the air, a mixture of ash and dirt. It settle on my skin, my clothes, a fine layer of grit that I could feel. The thick slabs of concrete that stood upright in the ground all bore barely readable names. 

I let out a surprised scream as I deciphered them. My hands flew to my mouth, but I screamed. In the far corner was one, tilted and chipped in the corners, but was noticeably older than the others. I walked over to it and fell to my knees to get a better look. I had to make sure. There was no way these markers could possible…

But as my fingers trailed the barely-there letters, I knew whose grave this was.

“Fang…” I whimpered pathetically. “Fang…no, no, no, no…”

I looked at the ground beneath me and, as realization of what—or rather, who—lay beneath me, I got to my feet as quick as I could and moved down the line to the next stone, careful to leave a few feet between me and the markers now. But one after the other, each stone bore the names of the Flock. Some stones were blank, others only held half letters and names I couldn’t decifer. But my Flock…all here…all accounted for…

“What is this?” I demanded, screaming for someone to answer me and explain. I stood dumbfounded. There was no possible way that the gravestone I was staring at bore my name.

But it did.

I finished up the row, having no more tears left to shed, and looked at the backs of the rest of the tombstones. If the back line held the names of my family, what were the others?

I walked slowly to stand in front of the next line in front of where I had started, careful not to look at Fang’s.

But I never got to see what the other markers read, because once again, pain exploded behind my eyes and I dropped to my knees again.

\--x--

Fang sat on the bed, staring out the window. He was trying to convince himself he wasn’t waiting for Max to come home. He had no intentions on ambushing her this time, of forcing her to talk. He would give her space, but he just wanted to make sure she made it home alright.

But he couldn’t help but be frustrated, a sentiment the rest of the Flock seemed to share when Iggy asked where Max had gone storming off to. They’d only calmed down when I promised that if she wasn’t back exactly when she told Dr. Martinez that Iggy could take Nudge and Gazzy to go find her.

And I was kicking myself for not being well enough to fly. When I’d passed out as we escaped the School with Max, I’d torn a tendon in one of my wings. The healing process had been slowed by whatever vaccine Dr. Martinez had given me. I could feel it, this dull ache as I tried to stretch a wing in the small confines of the bedroom.

And then there were the strange occurrences with her body temperature that had me up at night. I tried to convince myself it was just her power, like she’d said. I’d gone through a similar phase when my invisibility had grown to become controllable.

“Maybe not,” Fang muttered narrowing his eyes at the sight outside the window before flying down the hall, past everyone’s open bedroom doors, past Ella and Dr. Martinez in the kitchen, and out the door. 

Fang could hear Iggy calling his name and the others following him, but he didn’t respond to them.

Two boys walked up the pathway meeting Fang half way down the driveway. A tall tan boy in jeans and a tee shirt, his black hair pulled into a ponytail at the base of his neck, carried Max in his arms, while the other, a light skinned blond in jeans and a camouflage sweater, followed sluggishly behind him.

“What happened?” Fang demanded harshly, taking an unconscious Max into his arms. He did a quick scan but found no obvious wounds.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We found her unconscious in a field a few blocks away.”

“How did you know she lived here?” Iggy asked skeptically, stepping up to Fang’s side, Dr. Martinez stepping up to the other to examine her daughter closely.

“Uh…” the blonde stuttered, the two exchanging worried looks. “We…just knew.”

Fang narrowed his eyes. “Lie better,” he ground out.

“Just believe us when we say we aren’t here to hurt you,” the dark haired boy said quickly, hands up in a surrendering way. He looked around himself. “Where the hell is Nikki?” His friend just shrugged.

“Fang,” Dr. Martinez said quietly, “let’s get her to her bedroom.”

Fang argued with himself in his head for a moment, trying to decide whether or not to pass Max off to Iggy and handle the two boys in front of him.

I got this. Fang glanced at Angel behind him and gave a curt nod. With one last look at the two boys, he turned on his heel and headed back into the house.

Fang put Max down gently on her bed and paused to brush a few strands of hair out of her face before checking all areas of exposed skin for any new cuts or bruises.

Dr. Martinez did the same thing and sighed. “She feels alright, no fever, no new lacerations.” She looked up at Fang, who was flickering in place, there one second and gone the next. He was still as stone, staring down at Max. “She’s okay, Fang.”

“I don’t know what it is about them,” Fang whispered to her, “There’s something about them.”

“I know what you mean,” she muttered back. 

\--x--

“You guys might want to come in,” Angel said quietly as Fang passed her. “This is not optional.”

The two nodded quickly and followed the flock into the living room.

“She’ll be fine,” Dr. Martinez said quietly, joining the group in the living room.

Fang came in quietly and sat down next to Ella and Nudge on one of the two couches while Dr. Martinez moved to stand behind them with Gazzy. Angel and Iggy came out of the kitchen and while Iggy took a seat on the armrest next to Ella, Angel grinned at Fang and sat between his legs on the floor.

Quit worrying about them, really, Angel thought to him. They’re going about this all wrong, but they don’t know any better.

“We’re friends,” a girl said from the floor in between the two boys. Eyebrows rose at the new voice. She had long wavy black hair and wore jeans and a black jacket over her red t-shirt. How had she gone unnoticed?

“Really, we are,” one of the boys agreed.

“Where did you come from?” Nudge asked, amazed she, too, had missed the girl.

“I was preoccupied with something else, but I got here as quick as I could,” she explained quickly with a wave of her hand.

“Nikki, this is going very, very bad,” the dark-haired boy muttered.

Nikki nodded solemnly and stood, unzipping her jacket and shrugging it off. “Proper introductions then.”

“That would be nice,” Fang snapped lowly. “But I’m actually more interested in how you found Max and how you knew where to take her.”

Iggy glanced in Fang’s direction. “But they did take her here,” he said. “Not the School.”

“How did you guys find her?” Dr. Martinez asked calmly.

“We were looking for her,” Nikki said quickly. “If I could just—”

“Why?” Fang ground out, sitting on the edge of the couch now. Ella exchanged a glance with Nudge behind his back, afraid the man was going to fly off the couch.

“Fang,” Angel tried to intervene, gripping his knee by her shoulder.

“Can I just—” Nikki tried again, only to be interrupted by Fang again.

“Answer the question,” he demanded.

A muscle in Nikki’s cheek twitched and she dropped her jacket at her feet as two large, black wings emerged from behind her, filling the space behind the three kids. “That shut you up,” she muttered. “You never let me talk sometimes…”

“Proper introductions then,” the Gasman breathed, watching with shock and awe like the rest of them.

“I’m Nikki, this is Jay,” she gestured to the dark-haired boy, then to the blond, “and this is Zak.” Nikki pulled her wings back in and took a slow breath, pursing her lips.

“Look,” Jay started smoothly as Nikki took her seat back on the floor between the boys. “We could lie and tell you stories, but the truth is—”

“We can’t tell you how we know Max and how we knew to bring her here,” Zak finished for him gravely. Nikki seemed mostly content with this answer.

But the Flock? Not so much…


	16. Chapter 16

Fang stood up abruptly, his mask of emotion shattered, revealing dense anger and fury, his eyes alight with it. Again, he began flickering before everyone.

“No, no, wait,” Nikki said quickly, standing up, too. “Ugh, dammit this is so messed up.” She rubbed her forehead and tried to think.

“Tell us as much as you can,” Angel murmured with an encouraging smile. “I’ll get them to understand.”

“Angel,” Nikki breathed, a smile flicking across her face briefly.

“Great,” Jay muttered. He took a deep breath. “We aren’t…from around here.” He scratched his head. “I’m not sure how much we should say…”

“We aren’t from around now,” Nikki added.

“What does that mean?” Ella asked quietly.

Seeing the confused looks on a few faces, Angel clarified, “They’re from a few years in the future.”

“What?” Fang’s head snapped down to Angel, confused and angry. She wouldn’t lie to him. “So they’re allies from the future?” Angel nodded once, her gaze flicking to him over her shoulder, but she was scrutinizing the trio in a way that still left Fang feeling some sense of comfort, like the Flock hadn’t become too trusting.

She’s waking up, Angel murmured to him in his head. Please, try to calm yourself a little. Your intense reaction is scaring the others. We don’t see you like this often and to be honest, it’s a bit of an overreaction.

“This is giving me a headache,” Fang grumbled, turning stiffly and heading for the stairs. He didn’t intend to listen to them if they were going to play games. And seeing Max was what he needed to calm down. He tapped Iggy’s hand twice as he left the room, seeing the other man throw him a quick thumbs up.

“Fang?” Nudge called after him.

“He just got over being quite sick,” Dr. Martinez explained to the guests, putting a hand on Nudge’s shoulder.

“Did we really come back that far?” Jay mumbled to the others.

“That wasn’t the plan,” Zak whispered.

“Well maybe we’ll make it in time this time!” Nikki snapped.

“In time for what?” Gazzy asked.

Angel’s eyes widened and she stood up abruptly, her eyes darting between Nikki and the boys. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her, but her eyes were locked with Nikki’s, their minds deep in conversation. A flicker of a smile flashed across Nikki’s lips and Angel nodded slowly, taking a shaky breath.

“I’m going to go check on Max,” she said with a smile, heading for the kitchen to get a glass of water for her. She glanced at Dr. Martinez. “Can I get a few aspirin for her?”

“Of course.” Dr. Martinez followed Angel into the kitchen.

-x-

My head throbbed and it was then that the only thing I wanted in the world was something to make it stop. I tried to roll onto my side and my head seemed to hate that. Slower, I pressed my forehead against the cold wall.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, finally having found some comfort. The clicking the door knob made was my only hint that someone had come in, but the silence was what told me who it was. I knew I was at home, in bed. I could only assume I’d missed my curfew and Fang or one of the others had come and found me. So much for future solo flights…

I didn’t intend on rolling over or opening my eyes because I wasn’t ready to tell him what had happened yet. I didn’t want to think about it. At all. But as the memory touched the edges of my mind I let out an involuntary shudder.

“That bad?” Fang asked quietly. The bed shook as he got in it next to me.

“I don’t…” I tried to speak, but no sound came out. Maybe I hadn’t needed to say anything, but somehow Fang knew exactly what I was thinking. He lay down next to me and draped his arm across my shoulders.

“It’s alright,” he whispered, his voice at my ear.

“Who found me?” I asked quietly, still not looking at him. “I’m sorry…”

Before he could respond, someone else came in and Fang sat up slowly.

“I brought aspirin, Max,” Angel said, holding out a cup of water and small white pills. I sat up slowly and gratefully took the pills from her with a small smile, downing them all at once.

“You know who those kids are, Angel?” Fang asked in his usual quiet tone.

“What kids?” I asked, joining Fang in a vertical position to take the cup of water and little white pills from Angel, downing them quickly.

Angel pressed her lips together tightly and only looked to Fang.

“Three kids brought you home,” he told me. “We don’t know who they are, or how they knew to bring you here, but they claim to be from the future.”

I gave him a flat look, wondering what kind of joke this was. “The future?” I asked skeptically. “Like, sci-fi-movie nonsense?”

“More like bird-kid-powers,” Angel muttered, crossing her arms and rocking on her feet.

I narrowed my eyes at her when she said that. “They’re bird kids?”

“Ange,” Fang prodded again, “I know you read their minds. You know who they are.”

She nodded once. “But for the sake of…well, everything, I can’t tell you who they really are. All I can tell you is what they’re willing to tell us.”

“But you’ll let us know if they’re lying?” I demanded. 

She nodded again, but laughed. “Oh, they wouldn’t lie to us. They know how much trouble they’d be in if they did.” She tilted her head in thought. “I can’t find the best way to explain how they know us in the future, but we do end up mentoring lots of escaped experiments. If that helps.”

“Angel,” I whispered. “You know…”

“I know a lot, Max,” she giggled. “You have to be just a little more specific.”

“The others out there—”

“They sent them back. Or forwards. Don’t worry about it. Nikki, Zak, and Jay are the only ones that stayed. The only ones who could.”

I nodded. “Good.” I felt Fang’s eyes on me but I didn’t look up. Couldn’t. 

“We’ll explain if they do,” Angel supplied and Fang tensed slightly.

“Thanks, Angel,” I mumbled, sitting still and not making eye contact with anything but the floorboards.

She smiled, and with a short nod, left the room. The click the knob made echoed in the silence and I could once again feel Fang’s eyes on me, expectant. I was torn in two. Part of me desperately wanted to tell him what I saw, but another part just wanted to forget, never relive those horrible moments in the cemetery, never see those inscriptions—

I let out another shudder and my hand twitched. I wanted to wrap my arms around myself in sink into the earth. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that to the flock. Now was not the time to give up and have a mental breakdown. I needed to stay strong for everyone…

“Max,” Fang said softly. 

I took in a shaky breath. “We need to talk about earlier,” I said instead. 

“What happened to you?” he demanded.

“We should jojn the others downstairs, then, if you don’t want to talk about that now,” I tried again.

Fang gripped both my shoulders, keeping me planted on the bed. “If we’re going to do this,” he said, gestering between us, “we need to start talking about the hard shit, alright?”

“I—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

So I didn’t say anything. It was the easiest thing to do in my confused state. Call it shock, trauma, whatever you want. Bottom line, is that I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I’d gone through worse at the school than seeing my family’s names on gravestones. I’d seen them being tortured. That, to me, is worse than the escape of death.

Isn’t it?

“Don’t do this,” Fang pleaded. “You don’t have to be Maximum Ride, the invincible, all the time. Not when it’s just you and me.”

I looked up at him. His dark eyes were glowing with worry and a million other emotions. 

“Just be Max,” he whispered.

I snapped.

One minute I was staring blankly at him, the next I had crumpled into myself with my face in my hands, trying not to scream as tears began to spill.

“Death is worse,” I heard myself whisper after a few moments. “It can break us all apart.”

“No one’s going to die, Max,” Fang said solidly, pulling me to him so that he could cup my face and force me to look at him. All the emotions that had swirled around his eyes seconds before was replaced by blazing determination.

“I saw it,” I whispered in horror, my eyes widening at the memory. “When I was at the lake. I saw the flock’s graves. A vision.”

“It wasn’t real,” Fang pressed. “Your body temperature can jump too high and give you fever dreams, Max.”

“That wasn’t a dream. The pain—I saw myself before the vision started. I saw an older version of myself.”

He didn’t answer, but I didn’t hold it against him. I didn’t know what to say either.

I sat there, Fang still holding my face in front of his own, and squeezed my eyes shut. A few more tears escaped my eyes and I made no motion to wipe them away.

Fang let me go and stood up, facing away from me. His posture radiated anger and he crossed his arms. That surprised me a little.

“You may not be invincible,” he mumbled, “but you were always reasonable. Rational. Stubborn, yes, but never stupid.”

“Fang, you think I don’t know what I saw?” I snapped, getting to my knees on the bed. “It seemed so real. I could touch the grave markers, feel the inscriptions on them, smell the dirt, the fire…That woman I saw was me.”

He whipped around and stormed over to the bed so that his face was inches from my own.

“But it never happened. It’s never going to. It wasn’t real.” He snarled.

“I could feel the stones,” I said just as harshly, slowly.

Fang reached down and jerked my hand and held it up to his face. “Can you feel me? I’m real, Max! I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. Not for a long, long time.”

“Promise,” I demanded. I would make him promise every chance I got. So if he broke it, I could remind myself that he didn’t just break one promise again, he would have broken a thousand.

“I promise,” he said before he pressed his lips to mine. And I didn’t run this time. He pulled away after only a few moments, his hands to himself this time, but I could see a new distinct blush in his cheeks. “Now. I left three unidentified bird kids with your mom and the Flock…”

I took a deep breath and stood, brushing some of the wrinkles out of my clothing, hoping I looked like the definitive leader of our merry band of mutants. “Let’s go.”

“We can have that other talk later,” he mumbled as I passed him.

“Oh boy…”


	17. Chapter 17

“Fang’s in Max’s room, she just woke up,” Angel muttered to Iggy, sitting down next to him.

Hearing this, Jay and Zak looked simultaneously at Nikki, who swung both arms out and smacked them both. 

“They’ll be down in a second,” Angel continued. 

They all sat in an uncomfortable silence while they waited, broken only by Dr. Martinez returning from the kitchen with a couple bottles of water for the three visitors. Nikki, Zak, and Jay didn’t know what to say, and the flock didn’t want to start until the entire flock was present.

Jay took the time to casually glance around the room at each of the flock members and take them in as they were. It was strange to him, seeing them so young. He paused on Iggy, staring into his pale, sightless, blue eyes.

“Zak,” he muttered, leaning back to see him around Nikki. “Zak, he’s blind, too…” This attracted everyone’s attention. Nikki glanced from Zak to Iggy impassively.

“Too?” Iggy asked, slightly surprised.

“Zak is blind, too,” Jay stated.

“Been that way since I was born,” he said. He let out a soft chuckle. “I guess I’m lucky that way.”

“Lucky?” Nudge exclaimed. “How is that lucky? You’re blind! That’s terrible! You’ve never seen anything before—”

“That’s exactly why he’s lucky, Nudge,” Iggy said quietly with a soft smile. “He doesn’t know what he’s missing, so he isn’t burdened with missing it. He doesn’t know anything else, so being blind, to him, is normal.”

Zak laughed. “My dad says the same thing all the time.”

That caused Nikki to roll her eyes and Jay visibly held back a laugh. Angel even cracked a small, amused smile.

-x-

Silently, Fang and I filed into the room. I sat down between Nudge and Ella, while Fang chose to stand behind me, arms crossed and his poker face solidly in place. I tried to look as powerful as I knew I was, lethal and not to be messed with.

“Now that everyone’s here…” Angel prompted, looking at the three on the floor. The dark haired girl nodded.

“Like we said before, we’re from the future,” she said easily, glancing at me. “I’m Nikki, this is Jay and that’s Zak.” Her eyes never left mine as she gestured to her two friends. “We originally came here with a few others, but they couldn’t stay.”

“Why not?” Gazzy asked, sounding bored.

“If one person from the future meets their own selves from the past, we weren’t sure what would happen, but we found out it’s not good. Knowing major things that you do yourself in the future can seriously effect time,” Nikki explained in her smooth, quiet voice. “These are only theories, but if that happens, the universe could split into different possible outcomes. In other words, the timeline that happened before you knew and changed something, and the timeline after.”

“That is, if the world isn’t destroyed,” Jay said gravely; Nikki nodded.

“But two people can’t exist in the same space in time,” Nikki continued. “I’ve tried with object before but nothing too serious every happened. It seems like people can’t be within a certain distance of each other before the similar brain waves get interrupted. I had to jump someone back to the future while these two took Max here.”

“How did you know to bring me here?” I asked. “What if we’d moved? How did you know when it is here?” God this felt weird referring to now in this way…

“We can’t tell you that,” Nikki said simply. I scowled.

“So your friends went back? Who were they? Why—” Nudge began, shifting uncomfortably next to me.

“We had…adult supervision,” Jay cut her off.

“We sent them back because of what was happening to Max,” Nikki said flatly.

“What do you mean?” Fang demanded, his tone just as flat. I smirked to myself.

“Her future self got to close to this one,” Nikki gestured to me on the couch again.

“Still think it was a fever dream?” I whispered over my shoulder to Fang, but Mom put her hand on my shoulder and I faced the three kids again.

“Those were the results of….well, of someone getting too close to themselves…” Nikki mumbled unwillingly. “It’s been noted and I’ll try to avoid it from happening again…”

“Nik,” Zak whispered. “Are you su—”

“We won’t tell them everything,” she whispered back. “Only what’s necessary.”

“So you’re saying that—” Iggy started.

“We sent both Max and Iggy back to the future.” No one moved. No one even blinked. Everyone was stone still in shock. Nikki blinked out of sight for a few seconds before becoming visible again, her face blank as if she hadn’t just disappeared.

“Who are you,” I demanded loudly, fully understanding Fang’s intense uneasiness with these kids. This sounded like a trap from the school. None of this sounded real. “Time travel isn’t possible¬—”

“—this sounds like a really bad plot for some b-rated sci-fi movie no one ever hears about,” Nikki and Max said in unison.

“That was weird,” Iggy whispered. Louder, “was that weird for anyone else?”

“Time travel,” Nikki explained, her hands gripping her knees tightly. “I’ve been trying to tell you. I popped a few seconds into the future, waited in the kitchen to hear what you would say, then went back a few seconds.”

“The blinking?” Gazzy questioned. “That was you time traveling?”

“It’s a little more fun to look at when she takes people with her,” Zak mumbled to him with a smirk.

“We’re…mutant friends in the future,” Nikki pressed, clearly growing impatient, which was starting to piss me off.

“Are there more of us?” Nudge exclaimed, causing Jay and Zak to laugh; Nikki merely nodded.

“But that’s not the issue here,” Fang said. The younger members of the flock looked at him strangely. “Why are you here?”

Jay looked at Nikki. “Can we tell them that?”

“This is the confusing part,” Nikki said, narrowing her eyes at the floor and running a hand through her hair. “See, what we’re here to do is change parts of the past so that something in the future never happens. I mean, we’ve done it before, but I’ve never been able to get us far enough into the past to make it in time. And we’ve never changed things this…important.”

I could feel my headache coming back. This time travel stuff was seriously confusing.

“But wouldn’t that split the universe, like you said before?” Iggy asked, also sounding as skeptical as I felt.

Nikki bit her lip, deep in thought. When she didn’t answer him—or rather, didn’t hear him—Zak answered for her. “Her parent’s think it’s different in that someone isn’t changing something they themselves did in the past. So it’s erasing that option of choice. That one person isn’t meeting their past selves, thus leading them to a fork in the road when the decision arises.”

“If someone goes back in time to tell their own self not to do something, when it comes time to make a decision, they’ll have to decide whether to make the choice they went to the past to change, or a new decision entirely.”

“Man,” Gazzy groaned, rubbing his head. “This is so confusing.”

Iggy laughed. “No kidding.” I whacked him in the arm and he shut up.

“So what exactly is it you came to change?” I asked as gently as I could muster.

Nikki looked up at her. “Can I speak with you alone?”

I blinked, not having expected that. I glanced over at Fang, whose face had smoothed out a little in surprise, before I looked down at Angel who only offered an almost imperceptible smile. No one knew what to say after that. I glanced around the room at the surprised expressions. I paused at mom, who sat quietly. I’d almost forgotten she was there. 

“Mom?” She blinked and looked over at me with her eyebrows raised. “Why don’t you take Ella and make a snack? Please?”

Her face softened knowingly and she leaned down to kiss the top of my head as she passed. “I think we’re perfectly safe, but I will go make our guests something to eat.” Ella shook her head when I looked over at her, not moving from her seat, she’d scooted closer to Nudge when I’d stood, her knees against Angel’s back. She was safe regardless…

I turned back to Nikki, whose face had gone white, the two boys behind her looking a little nervous.

“That’s your mom?” she asked quietly, watching as Mom disappeared around the corner into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” I said slowly, realizing no one had probably been introduced to them. I pointed slowly around the room. “Iggy, Ella, Nudge, Fang, the Gasman, Angel, Max.”

“Nik, this isn’t the time,” Zak muttered behind her, demanding her attention.

“Right,” she whispered, taking a deep breath.

“What are we going to do now?” Jay muttered.

Nikki nodded to herself then looked back up at me. “Can we talk outside?”

“Upstairs,” I said instead, leading the way towards the bedroom. She was not going to be making any decisions for me, I would make sure I was in a familiar, defendable area. Who knew if she had someone waiting outside the house…

I heard her following, her footsteps light and quiet. She’d been trained well. The thought made my heart drop. If these fellow birdkids were as innocent as they were trying to seem, what kind of life had they led that they needed training, that they had to be taught to live the same way we had?

I led her into the bedroom I’d been sharing with Angel and Nudge—most days—and shut the door behind us for some semblance of privacy. I knew Fang could be invisible outside the door listening, and Angel would hear our thoughts anywhere on the street, but I hoped she’d feel better and be honest.

When Nikki didn’t immediately start, I started for her. “You understand why we have a hard time believing you aren’t a threat, right? If you know us in the future, I’m sure you know what we’ve gone through.”

“Bits, yeah,” she nodded. “I need to go back home to ask my parents some questions before we tell you that because we might have actually come back too far.”

“What are you here to do?” I tried again, surprised at how gentle my voice was despite my stomach being in knots.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she muttered quickly, pacing around the room. “I don’t know what I can or should tell you that won’t royally jack things up for us in the future.”

I pursed my lips and waited stubbornly, watching as she walked slowly around the room, looking at all the weird trinkets that had been left in here forgotten. Mom had had to clear out storage boxes when we’d arrived to make room for us.

“In the future,” she started slowly, “before you go to sleep at night, you count everyone. Oldest to youngest. Each person. I asked why when I was about eight and you told me stories about how you’d have nightmares of losing someone.”

“I wouldn’t tell just anyone that,” I admitted quietly. The whole Flock did it, I knew, but we didn’t talk about why, or point out that we did.

“I’m not just anyone.”

“Alright,” I said with a heavy sigh, standing. “We’ll give you a pass for the immediate future. But I’m going to need better answers eventually.”

Nikki nodded and rubbed her eyes with her hands. “I just need to talk to Daddy and I think I’ll be able to give you something more substantial, I just don’t know when we are compared to what we’re trying to achieve.”

I nodded and patted her shoulder like I would one of the Flock, and felt her relax a little. “Grab some food from Mom and then head back…or forward or whatever…”

But she didn’t. We made it downstairs and she stood in the doorway to the kitchen behind me as I went to lean against the counter, watching the two boys at the kitchen table with Nudge, Angel, and Ella. Iggy and Gazzy were hovering near the fridge while Mom stood next to me at the counter, fixing a peanut butter sandwich. Fang was very noticeably missing.

“I’m going back.” Nikki’s declaration was met with resounding silence.

“Ni—” Jay started.

“I need to talk to Daddy,” she mumbled as she pulled on her shoes that she had left next to the door just outside the kitchen.

“He’s not going to be happy at all,” Zak said, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms.

“Yeah, well, he’ll get over it.”

“He’ll make us stay there,” Jay almost yelled, his face suddenly glowing with emotion as he ran to her side. “He won’t let us come back and fix things! He’ll just say what he always does! ‘This is the way things are meant to be. We shouldn’t mess with them.’ But if that were true, why do you have this power?”

She zipped up her jacket and looked at him evenly. “You’re not coming.” She turned to me. “Can they stay here at least until I get back?”

Startled, I tried to collect myself fast enough to answer, but mom responded first.

“Of course.”

Nikki nodded once in thanks and opened the door.

“If you guys stay here, he’ll have to let me come back. And since…” She looked over at us. “Well, he won’t come back with me.”

“Nikki. Tell my mom where I am,” Zak said quietly. “Dad will understand, but Mom will just worry…” Nikki just nodded again and took off down the driveway, disappearing before she hit the road.

“Until she gets back, nothing is to be said about the future,” Angel said as we all sat in silence, no one knowing what else to say. The others nodded and slowly dispersed. Nudge and Angel headed to their rooms. Iggy, Ella, and the Gasman remained in the kitchen with me while Mom left to find blankets and sleeping bags for the new guests.

Someone grabbed my hand, the fingers sliding between mine and I nearly jumped out of my skin when Fang materialized next to me. “Oh my god, stop doing that.” I smacked his arm as he gave me a one-sided smirk.

Jay looked like he was going to cry.

“How old are you guys?” I asked quietly. They looked younger, not old enough to be taking on whatever burden they were handed by being here.

“Nikki and I are fifteen. Jay is thirteen.”

I squeezed Fang’s hand. They weren’t much older than we were when we were on our own.

“Alright, guys,” Mom smiled, breathless, “come with me and we’ll get you set up on the couch. It’s getting late and you’re probably tired.”

I hugged Mom as best as I could. Jay took a sleeping bag from her and handed it to Zak, taking the other for himself and they both followed her back into the living room.

“Bed, guys,” I declared to the three eating around me.

“I’m a big boy now, Max,” Iggy said seriously, leaning against the fridge with froot loops falling from his mouth.

I laughed. “Just be quiet. Bed as soon as you’re done, Gazzy, ok? It’s late.”

“Ok,” he responded with a yawn.

“I’m pretty sure I’m not one of your baby birds,” Ella quipped as she passed me. 

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I shot back, sticking my tongue out at her.

I moved to head back to my room, but made it as far as the bottom of the stairs before strong arms snaked their way around my waist. I couldn’t help the smile that grew on my face.

“Tired?” he asked. I simply nodded.

Fang took my hand again and lead me up the stairs. Nudge and Angel had already gone to bed, knowing that as soon as I woke up, they’d be woken up, too, however early that was.

My hand left Fang’s as we passed him room. “I know a lot just happened in the last few hours,” he said lowly, his voice a deep rumble. “But if you still want to talk about earlier…” He raised an eyebrow at me and my blood began to race at the thought of confronting this. I really, really didn’t want to, but I knew it needed to happen eventually, so I followed him into his room.


End file.
